Mason’s voice faltered, “So I hugged him… and I kissed him, that night. The next Sunday night, and what felt like every night after that, each time made me show him more and more how much I loved him. I hated even seeing his shadow grazing my doorway wearing that deathly black suit and that white collar around his neck.” Mason laughed. “Either God was in the business of making life a practical joke, or he downright wanted me to live a life of pain. He took my father from me when I trusted him most to help, and then in return he sent me a replacement that took everything else I had in me.”
Mason’s voice took an aggressive tone, as did his breathing as it all settled into his facial expression.
Sydney reached for his hand. “Mason, I am so –”
“No!” he cut her off and pulled his hand away from her. “Jackson was the only one I ever told about this.” He stared at her furiously. “Why did you need to know this?”
“Mason, I didn’t…” she began to explain.
He brushed her off completely, angry that her one question had cut so deep. He stood up from the floor where he had been sitting beside her, snatched his suit jacket from the arm of the sofa, and walked towards the door.
“What are you doing?” She asked, seeing he was about to leave. “Mason, stop!” she yelled.
He reached for the doorknob but never grabbed it. The longer he stayed there the more of an emotional wreck he became. He wanted to run away from it, just like he had when he went off to college. Run and never look back. The door was right there, right in front of him, but he couldn’t move. There was nothing else to run from now. There was nothing else to protect, to hide. He hadn’t meant to tell her as much as he had. She knew, and that alone forced him to see it for what it really was. He dropped his hands, shaking and trembling as the suit jacket he was holding fell to the floor. His breathing grew heavy and frantic and his heart raced uncontrollably.
He tried to speak, but his words weren’t coming together. “I…trus-ted…and I p-ray-ed,” he stammered, barely holding onto the short gasp of him trying to catch his breath.
Sydney had never seen fear like that until her eyes met his stare. Mason looked as though he had been trapped inside of himself and was just now letting that part of him that had been hurting for so long see and feel for the first time. It was like all of it was happening to him right then as he stood in front of her. His eyes moved from one side of the room to the other, slowly losing their grip on familiarity. Sydney ran up to him and wrapped her arms completely around him, holding him as tightly as she could. His head fell into her chest and his tears poured like rain on a barren desert. They eased to the floor of the foyer, but she never let him go. He was like a child in her arms.
Chapter 31
The silence woke her at almost six in the morning. There was no beeping alarm or ringing phone; no reminder that night had come and gone other than the fact that she was awake and could hear the short breaths of Mason beside her, finally sound asleep. Sydney doubted he’d even remember dozing off, let alone climbing into bed. Last night had been rough on the both of them, but mostly him. Up until that point he’d never shed a single tear over what had happened. In all that time, he never stopped and asked why… why him? Instead, he’d built a wall where those thoughts existed and pretended nothing ever happened. He lived his life as such, thinking nothing would ever break through. Built brick by brick, bonded with anger and deceit, his hatred defended that wall. With that hatred he promised himself he would never let himself become that vulnerable again, to anyone or any feeling. Vulnerability was what had cracked him, though; it was what made him see for the first time what had really happened to him. Sydney had never seen so many emotions come out of one person, but she’d never seen that much hurt either. His face was still stained with dry tears as he slept. He would probably hate himself in the morning when he awoke, but at least he was finally able to sleep.
Sydney got out of bed just as the daylight began to peek into the room. Her feet pressed lightly into the floor so as not to wake him as she tiptoed out of the room and quietly pulled the door closed behind her. She didn’t feel like breakfast, or anything to eat really. Her appetite wasn’t as usual, but that was no surprise. It was extremely difficult for her to stomach all that she had heard, let alone keep food down at the memory of it. She made a cup of coffee instead of her usual hot chocolate and sat on the padded wicker chair on the terrace just outside the glass doors. It was still pretty early, so the first rays of the sun hadn’t fully broken through the clouds. A light breeze blew the few strands of her hair that hadn’t been tied back across her face. Her mind raced as the wind blew. She caught herself as a rush of emotions swelled her face almost to tears.
He was molested,
she kept telling herself, growing angry. She was angry at the fact that no one knew about it. No one was there to stop it. She was even angrier that it happened at the hand of a man who was supposed to be the leader of a church, and his mother’s husband. Her nose scrunched and her lips tightened. She was disgusted, shaking her head without even realizing she was doing it. Then,
Mason,
she thought. She felt horrible for him, absolutely horrified at the notion that all this time he’d been silent about something so damaging. There was no wonder he never talked about his life after his father died. The more her mind grasped thoughts that stemmed from his words, the more she began to see things far more clearly. Where she once didn’t understand his reluctance to go certain places, or even his initial approach with her, she finally understood.
When they first met she had assumed that he was the way he was because he appeared to be a man of privilege: he was young, attractive, and owned a part of his family business. That wasn’t it at all, though. His smooth talking, persuasive ways, and arrogance were nothing more than smoke and mirrors; a front to keep him from letting it letting
that
happen to him again. It was a cover to keep him from getting hurt again, by anyone; a wall that kept Mason from the contradiction of what saying you love someone you care about could actually do. It sickened her to think that someone could be so evil to destroy such a beautiful person that someone could turn something as sweet and innocent as the words, meanings, and actions of ‘I love you’ into feelings of fear and hate. She felt horrible for Mason.
Mason opened his eyes slowly, squinting in the brightness of the morning. For a brief moment he didn’t remember where he was. Slowly, the more he stared and looked around, the lamps on the nightstand, the blanket that covered him, and pattern of the carpet on the floor, started to look familiar again. His head was pounding and he could barely keep his eyes open or move fast enough to get out of the bed. He could still taste the bitterness of the alcohol in his mouth. Had it not been for that, and the tipped over glass beside the bottle on the nightstand, he wouldn’t have remembered having a single drink. He had, though, and much more than that. One drink led to two, two led to four, and four led to many, many more.
He sat on the edge of the bed as his mind fluttered in and out of what he could remember of the previous night. Then, he remembered he’d told her; he’d told Sydney everything.
Slapping himself on his already throbbing head,
Oh my God,
he thought. Looking around the room, he didn’t see her. In his blight of memories he did remember that she was next to him when he fell asleep. Hearing no sound other than the mild breeze that blew against the window he both feared and hoped that she was gone. Even though he didn’t want her to go, if she had, at least he wouldn’t have to deal with trying to act as if things were normal.
He felt a cool gust of wind from the terrace door being opened as he stood in the hallway walking towards the kitchen. Sydney didn’t hear him wake up or come out of the room, but standing just beyond the corner of the wall, he could see her.
Yawning himself awake, he leaned in the doorway and said, “Good morning.”
She looked up at him over her right shoulder with a warm smile “I didn’t expect you up so early.”
“I didn’t expect to be asleep so late.”
She smiled.
He still had on his black dress pants from the previous night, and his now wrinkled white shirt was partially unbuttoned.
“Have you been up long?” he asked, still standing in the doorway.
“Not too long, just a little while,” she responded, still staring off into the distance.
She wasn’t as spunky as she usually was in the morning, or in general. Although she hadn’t said anything, he could tell something was on her mind. He wondered if things were going to be okay between them.
“About last night,” he mumbled, “I don’t want you to think …or …you know…feel sorry for me, or anything.”
“I don’t know what I feel, to be honest with you,” Sydney cut him off. “No one ever wants to be the one to hear stories like this so close to home, but what we fail to realize is close to home or not, it happens. It happens.” She paused. “I do feel sorry for you. But more than that I feel…angry!” she modestly chuckled. “But that anger isn’t mine to have; it’s yours and you are the only one who can change that.”
Mason frowned in confusion from what she was saying. “That means what, exactly?”
“It means the worst things in life could happen to us, and when they do happen to us the way we let it dictate the rest of our lives is our choice,” she began to explain.
“Okay, but I’m still trying to get what you mean by I’m the only one that can change it.”
She didn’t have the right words to say it, but Sydney was trying her best to make him see that he didn’t have to let what happened to him dictate who he was today. “I’m not going to say… what happened to you shouldn’t make you angry.”
“But it sounds like that’s exactly what you are about to say.”
“Mason, just listen ...please? You have every right to be angry –at him, even at God if you choose.”
“But?”
“But… what’s the point?”
She shook her head, knowing what she was saying wasn’t coming out the way she meant. “I mean it happened,” she continued, “and I understand–”
“You understand?” he cut her off. “That’s the problem: everyone understands, but no one
gets it!
You don’t know what it was like. No one knows what it felt like or what living with someone like him was like, but,” he sarcastically added, “it’s okay, because everyone
understands.
”
“Mason, that’s not what I’m trying to say.”
“Well you should hear yourself, because it sounds like that’s exactly what you’re saying.”
“Look, all I’m saying is you can’t let things like this push you into a little box where you shut people out, afraid of letting them get too close.”
“Oh my God, you are really doing this right now?”
“Doing what?” Sydney asked.
He disregarded her question. “So what exactly do you think I should do, then?”
She pursed her lips, “Forgive your stepfather.”
Mason shook his head in disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me!”
Sydney tried her best to get him to see where she was coming from, hoping not to seem more offensive than she felt she was being perceived as being. “
Mason, forgiving someone doesn’t mean you’re weak. Forgiving them means you’re strong enough to know that people make mistakes.”
“So what you’re saying is I’m weak and what he did was make a mistake?! It was all, this whole thing, just a simple accident then, right?”
“No,” she abruptly cut him off. “You’re confusing my words.”
“I’m not confusing anything. Maybe you should just stop talking.”
She was digging an even deeper hole with everything she said. Nothing was coming out sympathetic or with the slightest hint of empathy, as she’d meant.
“What I’m trying to say is, until you forgive him, until you are able to move past what he did to you by no longer feeding it with hate and painful memories, you limit yourself from being who you really are or who you could become.”
Sydney pressed her hand on his chest over Mason’s heart, hoping he’d finally see the sincerity of her words.
He laughed, tilting his head in dismay. He moved her hands from his chest and backed away with a look of resentment. “You are
all
the same. So…I guess forgiveness just makes it all go away, right? Make it all seem like it never happened, make me a better,
stronger
person, right?” His tone was filled with sarcasm.
“No. It won’t make it all go away, or make it seem like it never happened, but it’s a start. A start at –”
“You know what ….just stop. I don’t know why I said anything to you at all,” he shook his head. “I trusted you enough to share something with you that I thought…you know what, forget it.”
“Mason, you can trust me.”
“Can I? Of everything I said, your big idea is to pretend like it never happened. What is that, Sydney?”
“Mason, that’s not what I was saying at all.”
“Well, you said more than enough,” he added as he prepared to walk out. “Understand one thing, Sydney, and make sure the Christian, ‘God forgives all’ side of you gets this: I. WILL. NEVER. FORGIVE. THAT. MAN. And the day his body burns in Hell, I’ll be there to light the match. And if that affects us, this, whatever this is, that we having going on, I guess you have a decision to make.”
He stormed past her, making his way to the door. Sydney wasn’t going to let him leave, though, not like that. All she wanted to do was help, and from where she stood she was doing more damage than good. She didn’t know what to say in a situation like this. Is there ever really a right thing to say…or do? At the very least she, just wanted him to face it head on. Maybe then he could,
Í don’t know,
she thought,
move past it
. Mason reached for the door but she yelled out, pulling his attention back.
He opened the door to leave.
“Mason, you can’t keep running from this!” she yelled.
“’I’m not running!” His voice was thunderous, slamming the door back closed still inside the room. “So what are you, judge and jury now?”
“No, of course not,” she nervously exclaimed.
“I guess you think I’m too weak to deal with it then, right?”
“No, Mason,” Sydney shook her head, trying to calm him down, “I never said that.”
“You seriously don’t get it! You don’t know what it is like to go through life not knowing if something as simple as a hug or a brush of the shoulder was right or wrong, not knowing if you are…. gay… because of what a man someone who was supposed to be a father to you did to you, or if you are straight because, after all, you didn’t have a choice. I had to prove to myself that I wasn’t that, that I wasn’t what he made me. I forced myself to become everything that I never intended. I slept with every woman I wanted to hundreds just to prove to myself that I didn’t like what he did to me. I made sure I never gave anyone enough of me to know me, or to love me, because that’s when they take everything. But then you come along,” he shook his head. “I willingly lost myself and who I had become, who I was before you, just so I could feel for you what I’d never felt before, and I actually liked it. But all you see in this is ‘forgive and forget’. I
can’t
forget it, Sydney. I am reminded every single day when I look in the mirror that
everything
that should have made me who I am was taken from me.”
She stood at a loss for words, but wanted so badly to say something, to respond somehow.