Away From Everywhere (18 page)

One day, frustrated, fed up, wanting a father back, he threw a pencil at him. A sharpened pencil, like a dart. He threw it at him, and it never occurred to him until that moment that he was entitled to feel resentment towards his father. It wasn't warranted or right, but it was an option, and on that day it helped. It helped to hate his father for abandoning him. It helped to believe that if he had never lost his mind, his mother would not have starting working at that shelter. She never would have died. He never would have met Abbie. If his parents were still around he'd have their house to stay in
for now
. Until he got back on his feet, he'd have his old bedroom back. The room he discovered music in and grew up in and where he carved
Nirvana
and
Owen loves Maggie
into the closet wall.

A nurse poked her head in the doorway, the pencil still rolling across the floor. “Visiting hours are over in a minute, as you know.”

He nodded to her. It was the cold and bitter nurse he despised. She had a mannish face no man could love – patches of wiry hair on her blotchy chin and cheeks that would grow a beard if left alone, a large droopy mole on her forehead that hung down like a cocooning insect, and a witch's crooked nose. Owen figured she held the world in contempt for the face she was born with. He thought maybe he held her in contempt for his father's condition, even a little. It was inexplicable how much he hated her and that dusty pink cardigan she always wore that was three inches too short in the arms to make it to her wrists. Something about how haphazardly it fit her, how it flared out in the back and was missing buttons, said she didn't care about herself, or anything, including some guy visiting his father, needing something familiar and physical. She was always too pleased to announce that visiting hours were over, five minutes before they technically were.

He pulled his chair in front of his father's. He squeezed one of his father's fingernails as hard as he could, trying to startle him back into existence – the purple of the flesh beneath his nail cast out and replaced by a bone white. He let it go; the purple leaked back in. He looked his father in the eye and begged, spilling his words as quickly as he could, knowing that bitch of a nurse would be right back.

“Dad, if there is some part of you left in there, I need you back. Now. More than ever. More than when I was a kid and they took you away. More than that. More than I needed you to teach me how to walk and talk and ride a bike, or make a fist or add and subtract, or shoot a basketball or hold a knife. I don't know what I am anymore, Dad. If I am right or wrong. You'd understand. I can't find any meaning in anything. I can't force myself to try and–”

The nurse opened the door and sighed. “You need to leave now, sir.”

He hoped she hadn't heard him. Saying the words out loud like that, hearing them, the core of his despair, he felt pathetic. Adolescent. The nurse pulled on a gaudy jacket and looked at her watch, and stood in the door until Owen left. She smelled like greasy takeout as he brushed past her. Like bacon fat.

He left his father that day and went to his mother's grave. Anywhere but back to his appartment. It was mid-February, and walking along that snow-covered sidewalk, he felt just as cold. He was practically skiing along the icy, unsalted pavement. He refused to go back to his apartment because he couldn't stand acknowledging that he didn't feel at home in his own home. And he knew the first thing he'd do when he got back that day was open that bottle of Johnny Walker Red, and he refused to drink alone while the sun was still spilling through his windows.

It wasn't Abbie he was missing at home, not anymore anyway. Not her specifically: her banana pancakes, or the way she tapped pens off her fingernails as she processed thoughts, or the smell of their bathroom after she showered. There wasn't a word for what it was
about
her he missed, no matter how long he thought on it. It was needing that female presence in his life. Someone confident and motherly, with his best interests in mind. Without any plans now, any goals, he could feel the future dragging him towards something dark and vague.

By the time he got to the cemetery on Waterford Bridge Road, cars had him wet with the spray of slush. Cold wet slaps to the knees and hips, and twice to the face, a stinging left eye or a taste of salt. The sidewalks weren't cleared and he had to walk along the margins of the road beside dirty mounds of grey snow. He could tell which drivers were innocently inconsiderate and which just didn't care. It was in the brief flash of the brake lights, a sign the driver was taking in the damage in the rearview mirror, maybe cupping their mouth or screwing up their face in remorse.

He found his mother's headstone amongst the sea of others – unpolished black marble with worms of grey running through it – and realized he hadn't been there in over a year. He wasn't the type to find comfort in talking to a slab of marble, and leaving flowers next to her grave didn't feel like connecting with her.

Standing there above his mother, he didn't know what to say, or do, or think, or why he'd even come there. He expected some vague feeling of relief or comfort, but got a flash of guilt and anger instead. An isolated memory from Jim Croaker's trial filled his blank mind. He and Abbie had been lying on her couch, reading, when Alex burst into the house. He was just getting back from the trial. Owen wouldn't go. He couldn't go. He couldn't be in the same room with the man, couldn't
not
bring a knife or a rock of his own along to the courthouse. Couldn't stand having the weapon confiscated before he could use it. Couldn't stand having his image of the man refreshed. Or his guilt renewed. In his mind he was equally worthy of being on trial for his mother's death, so he couldn't sit beside his brother with that reality there between them.

“He was bawling, Owen, crying his eyes out. Saying how sorry he was. He never meant to kill her. He kept saying he only meant to hurt her, as if that was okay in itself.
Because she hurt his arm and took his Janine away
. He sounded like a whiny, dumb kid. And his lawyer was playing up the sympathy card to go along with his theatrics. Going on about how he was an abused kid with a drunk for a father. What's that supposed to change? He had a shitty father so
our
mother had to pay for it?”

“So …how did it, like–”

“His lawyer pushed for manslaughter, but the policemen who were there with you…that day…who seemed like they felt a little guilty, played up the willful disregard for life card. That's how the lawyer nailed Jim with second degree murder. His
willful disregard for life.
Yet the motherfucker was allowed to kick on that door, day after day, uttering threats, with a
willful disregard for life
, until he managed to drag Mom out the door.”

He looked at Owen, added, “Or whatever,” and looked down at his feet.

“Until I dragged Mom out the door
for
him, you mean?”

“Owen, no. The time for that is over now. Jim did this. Not you. I'm sorry for what I said that night. It was in the heat of the moment, you know?”

Just like that, the memory was gone.

It was cold, so cold his hands were numb even though he had them gloved and tucked deep into his pockets, yet he felt better there than anywhere else in the world that day. He felt away from everywhere. Invisible walls surrounded him. His breath hung like clouds in front of him with each exhale.

He sat beside her gravestone, leaning on it, feeling the grain of the headstone tug against his jacket. He rested his head against it and stared at the branches of a birch tree swaying in the wind. Rhythmically. With each gust of wind the branches swayed in a way that filtered the light like a kaleidoscope. It made the ground beneath the tree look afire with dancing sunlight. Lines of blue and grey and yellow criss-crossing each other at random. Almost like TV static now. He reached for his notepad:

What is it about light that has this tree in front of me ten feet tall and
still
reaching,
still
growing,
still
stretching towards the sun? I want to want something like that. To be that salmon swimming
up
stream, to be that determined. To be Ghandi, to care enough about something to starve myself. This indifference. I am not alive, I am not dead, I am something worse.

Minutes later, there was something about that ephemeral dancing light, how a cloud could soon end it, could soon block out the sun. And there was something about the stark-but-calm cawing of the one black crow in the whole graveyard, hopping along in the flickering light beneath that tree. How the wind blew snow and covered its tracks with each exhale, like the crow had no past to turn and contemplate, or the past didn't matter: a statement that there is forward movement only. There is nothing to be gained by dwelling on a past that is ultimately gone, buried, invisible and intangible. It made him reach for a pen. Everything looked equally symbolic of life and death, endings and beginnings. He wrote his first poem and rushed home to type it up. He was working on a collection called
Home
, trying to write short pieces set in every major landmark in St. John's, knowing a gimmick like that can help a book get published, or at least act as a marketing strategy.

He would've liked Abbie to be there when he got home. To share his first poem with her. Everything was starting to feel insignificant now that he had no one to share it with. He missed calling her into his office to read out a line or two, or to ask for her opinion on what to do next in a story he was working on.
Should I cut this story off here, or add this last paragraph?
He was only ever sure on a piece after she'd calmed all of his concerns and agreed with all his choices. He liked the way her hand clutched his doorframe as she listened, thought about her answers, and shared them. He liked her hands, the way the hair fell away from her face. He liked the impression of her chest beneath her sweater, the cling of it against her. He liked seeing her this way. It wasn't a sexual desire, a mere attraction, it was simply a comfort, or an appreciation of something graceful, right there in front of him and tangible.

Owen was sinking deeper and deeper by the day; something was swallowing him whole. One day he took the kettle off a red hot burner and felt like he could press the palm of his hand on the burner and it wouldn't hurt. Everything had lost significance. It concerned him enough to go to his doctor.

“I'm not depressed, but I don't care if I live another day. I am not psychotic like my father, but I don't feel in touch with reality. I feel like, if someone attacked me on the street, I'd just lie there and take the beating, submissively, and not even feel the pain. I feel like my actions don't have consequences, like I could walk in front of a bus and survive it. Like I could witness a murder and not feel emotionally connected to the scene.”

Given his father's history, the doctor looked into Owen's complaints. Weeks later, after a barrage of interviews and a seemingly childish questionnaire, he was told he had depersonalization disorder, and that there was little that could be done for him, for now.

“Medications are in the works,” the doctor told him, “but like any disease or disorder, pharmaceutical companies tend to focus their research on conditions that millions suffer from, like cancer and diabetes, so they can get rich off the medications they invent.”He shook his head, genuinely disgusted. “When it comes to something as obscure and unpopular as DPD, well, there's no money in that.”

The doctor laid his clipboard down and took a seat to deliver some of the worst news to Owen. “I've got a pamphlet to give you on DPD, and a few websites you might want to check out too.”

He handed Owen the white and green pamphlet: a poorly drawn cartoon of a depressed-looking teenager staring at the light at the end of a tunnel. He'd wait until he left the doctor's office to throw it in the garbage. It would be rude to do so in front of him.

“But there are a few things I want to give you, a sort of heads-up on in person.” He cleared his throat and brushed his bulbous nose with an index finger. “People suffering from DPD are prone to relationship issues, Owen, because intimacy can feel foreign when the disorder peaks. And drug dependency and alcoholism are common, because drugs and alcohol can make a DPD sufferer feel ‘more alive,' as you say, when they are feeling detached from themselves. So I need you to be honest with yourself if you find yourself drinking, or worse, and come to me, okay? There are a lot of good programs I can turn you on to.”

Owen smiled through the whole summary. Alcoholism and bachelorship hadn't concerned him, schizophrenia had. Owen was simply relieved he wasn't succumbing to the schizophrenia that consumed his father. Alex had mentioned– his concern for himself and Owen in his voice – that most research indicates schizophrenia is hereditary. Owen didn't need to hear it. Didn't need to know that. There were no steps to take to prevent it. There was no way to screen yourself for it, like a simple blood test. It just reached out its hand and grabbed you when you were at your weakest.