Luka #2
“I’m well aware. I’m not debating whether it’s something people do, or ignoring the reasons why they do it,” he said as he grabbed a few more chips. “I’m saying people often choose the very thing that will hurt them most. Hope might have its time and place, but it also lies.”
I squinted. “Hope lies? Since when?”
“The very nature of hope is to lie. It tells you there is a chance when there is none. It tells you things will be better if you keep trying, when, in fact, you’re usually making your life harder by continuing where you shouldn’t.
Hope lies. It is only by chance that occasionally its lie is made truth. ”
“What a depressing way of seeing it,” I said with a sigh. “Is that why you’re so cranky and judgy?”
The corner of his lips twitched. “No, I am cranky and judgy because I’m irritable by nature and have always been critical of life. In truth, the way I see life gives me a great deal of comfort.”
I scooted forward, raising a brow. I drew my knees up to my chest and rested my chin on them as I studied him. “How do you figure?”
“If hope lies, then I know better than to give weight to the whispers,” he said thoughtfully. “And I don’t need hope to know things can improve. Reason can do that. I can improve my life on my own without lying to myself.”
“Is that what you used when you were hurt?” I asked, vaguely gesturing to his back.
He gave me a sidelong stare before popping a chip in his mouth and chewing slowly. “I recognize an attempt to get more information when I see it.”
“I mean, yeah, but it’s not like some sneaky Guide trick to get you to talk, it’s the natural extension of this conversation.”
His expression soured for a moment before sighing.
“Yes. Reasoning is what I used to get through the recovery process. There is as much metal and plastic in my back as there is bone, muscle, and skin. Hope told me I could get through and return to my life. Reason said the doctors knew better, and while I should push myself and continue the process to make sure I could have at least something like a normal life, I was never going to go back to what I had been. Not just because the damage was too extensive, but because I had seen and learned too much in the accident to believe everything would go back to normal one day.”
I thought about that for a moment and sighed. “I mean, I’m not going to argue with what works for you.”
“But you aren’t going to agree with me either.”
“I can’t. Maybe you’ve got a point about hope lying, but it just...that doesn’t work for me. Hope is what got me through so much in my life. I can’t just throw it away.”
“Why not? Just because something worked for you doesn’t mean it works. You made it clear you thought yourself shiftless and wandering before, and you didn’t sound very happy about that.”
“Well, I mean, I wasn’t unhappy with it.”
“Wasn’t.”
“What?”
“You used the past tense...wasn’t. That infers there was a point where you became unhappy with it.”
“You’ve got me there,” I admitted slowly.
I needed to keep in mind that he was more observant than I had initially given him credit for.
Or maybe he wasn’t observant most of the time, but he picked up on things with an unnerving speed.
“But it wasn’t working for me anymore. It felt like I was.
..all over the place, which I guess I was, but it felt different. ”
I lapsed into silence. After all, how do you explain to someone what it was like to wake up and realize that you had done...nothing. Scores of jobs, dozens of friends, lovers, enemies, rivals. Different apartments, houses, couches I had slept on, all over the country.
And what had it amounted to? Nothing. I hadn’t developed any skills, and I certainly hadn’t built up a work history.
So there was no family, no friends to speak of, no career, no college degree, no work history that could help me. I was living my life the same way I had been for over ten years. I had looked around and realized that, while I had done so much and gone through so much, I had nothing to show for it.
“I woke up one day, and I just...hadn’t done anything. I had stories and life experience, but I didn’t have anything. No friends, no family, no home, God, the closest I had to a long-term relationship since my parents died was a plant.”
“You still have it?”
“Yeah, Myrna has hung in there like a champ, especially after I got some special lighting for her, but I always make sure to give her sunlight whenever I get the chance.”
“You...named the plant?”
I blinked. “Well, yeah. I’ve had a longer relationship with her than with anyone. I mean, other than my parents.”
“You do seem to have processed the loss of your parents.”
“Well, I was eight when they died. I’ve had time.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did they die?”
“Drunk driver,” I said, getting up to make another cup of coffee.
“They were out, and I was home with a babysitter. I got woken up by the cops telling the babysitter what had happened because there was no other family to inform. Imagine being a fourteen-year-old watching a kid, only to have to deal with the fact that the kid was now an orphan.”
“I...see,” he said in a tone that made me turn and stare.
“What?” I asked as the machine gurgled.
He scoffed. “You’re discussing one of the worst nights of your life, and the first thing you bring up is how traumatized the babysitter must have been?”
“I kept in contact with her for years. I wrote letters and sometimes talked to her on the phone. She always wanted me to call her when I reached a new home and to tell her if I was being treated right. I always told her I was okay.”
Rowan stared shrewdly as I started a second cup. “Even when you were not okay?”
“Especially then,” I said with a laugh. “She was always so worried about me; it didn’t feel right to make it worse.”
“Were there reasons for her to be concerned?” Rowan asked, and for once, I appreciated his calm, almost detached way of asking that potentially opened up a flood’s worth of trouble with the answer.
“You asking about abuse?” I wondered as I brought him the coffee and sat in the chair across from him: it didn’t feel like a lying-in-bed sort of conversation now.
“Thank you, and yes.”
“There were some who got...physical, yeah.”
“What kind of physical?”
I stared at him and took a deep breath. It wasn’t something I talked about often, and most of the time, people didn’t ask questions that deep.
Despite how much I had insisted it was good for people to know so they could be part of the force for change, people didn’t want to know.
That spared me from having to talk about the darker, uncomfortable parts of my childhood, and for the rest?
Most people respected when I said I didn’t want to talk about it.
But if I was going to ask him to open up, then I needed to be willing to do the same. “Nothing sexual, well—”
His lips thinned. “Oh.”
I blinked and shook my head. “Nothing sexual with me. But there was a foster family I was with for a couple of weeks, who got thrown in prison because they were abusing the girls. The boys were just creatures to throw food and water at occasionally. But they doted on the girls. At the time, I couldn’t understand why the two girls there were uncomfortable with being treated so well. Little did I know.”
“You were a child, you shouldn’t have to guess something so heinous.”
“True,” I said with a shrug. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t feel bad about being ignorant after I put the pieces together.
And some people weren’t afraid to smack the back of your head, call you things no one should be called, let alone kids, people who used starvation and.
..unconventional punishments that were basically torture. ”
“Do I dare ask?”
“I don’t know, do you?”
The corner of his lips twitched. “I might, if you were to dare to answer.”
I laughed a little. “Making kids stand outside in the winter with only a shirt and shorts on. One woman used to make kids who pissed her off dig holes in the blazing heat, only letting them in when they passed out.”
“I see,” he said, his expression dark. “Not to point out the obvious, but you’re clearly speaking of others going through that, rather than yourself. Is that...saying you were spared, or are you avoiding talking about what you went through because it’s painful?”
I stared, setting my cup on the table and leaning close to squint at him. “Hmmm.”
He leaned back, looking wary. “What?”
“I feel you’re the one who should be the Guide here, not me,” I said slowly, wrinkling my nose. “For someone who gives off ‘I do not care about other people’s feelings,’ you’re very good at poking in people’s heads.”
He stared back at me before snorting. “You would be amazed at how useful it is to have a basic understanding of how people function in my line of work.”
“Auditing,” I said, cocking my head. “I’ve never really asked about your work before, like what company and if you’re even good at it.”
“Probably for the best, it’s not terribly interesting.”
“You seem to find it interesting. Why else do it?”
He paused to take a sip of his coffee. “I find the obsession with ‘enjoying your job’ to be one of the biggest issues for people’s happiness.”
“Why’s that?”
“One does not need to be happy with a job to do it, and aspiring for happiness with a job is never guaranteed. I have seen many people who turned what they loved into a career and, within a few years, grew to hate it. But do you know what sort of people I’ve seen who are happy with their work?”
“You tell me.”
“People who find satisfaction in what they do.”
“Ah, okay, there is a difference. So that’s what you get from your job, satisfaction?”