Page 50 of The Family Across the Street
‘Shhh,’ says Gladys as she holds the children and begins moving backwards, towards her own house. ‘Shhh.’
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‘Mum, Mum…’ The words leave my lips without me even thinking about them. Words I haven’t said for years. She has been my mother, your mother, her and other words for a long time now. Ugly words from my father, from me.
I look down at what I’ve done, at her body, at the way she has fallen, at the way she is looking at me, her brown eyes wide, incomprehension in her stare. Perhaps she didn’t think I would do it. But she came at me. She threw herself at me to save them. They were the ones she was worried about, the ones she cared about. ‘Mum,’ I whisper because I cannot stop the word.
I have broken her the same way I broke the love of my life. The same way I broke Maddy. Maddy with her dark hair and blue eyes and the slight gap between her front teeth. Maddy who hummed songs in the morning while she brushed her teeth and liked to watch home renovation programmes. I have broken my mum the same way I broke Maddy. As I look at her, their faces merge and they become one, the same.
The anger that I have been consumed by dissipates into the air, thins out and is gone. All that’s left is confusion.
I stare down at the gun the way I stared down at my hands. They are still scratched from Maddy’s nails as she fought me, still bruised from connecting with her cheekbone. They hurt. My hands hurt but the physical pain was nothing compared to the real pain.
How could I have done this? How could I have done that?
I remember running from the apartment, leaving Maddy on the floor, trying to erase the image of her broken doll body, running and crying, knowing that I had done the worst thing possible. But she had loved me and then she didn’t. She just turned it off one day and that was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me. Not again.
When I stopped running, I hid in a park, behind some trees, sweat drying on my skin in the cool breeze that blew up, and I tried to work out why I had hurt the woman I loved.
I couldn’t stand the idea of her not loving me anymore and she wouldn’t listen to what I had to say. I promised to change, to become who she wanted me to be even though my father said I should never do that. But I would have done it for her.
‘You can’t change, Patrick,’ Maddy said. ‘This is who you are.’
‘You need to leave,’ she said.
‘I’ve tried my best, but this isn’t going to work.’
But I was trying my best. I was trying to be who she wanted me to be but it was just too much, too hard.
Maddy said, ‘Speak to your mother, she loves you.’
Maddy said, ‘You should forgive your mother; she’s never stopped trying. I’ve read the emails.’
Maddy said, ‘My brother doesn’t think we’re good for each other.’
Maddy said, ‘You need to stop treating me like this.’
Maddy said, ‘If you hit me again, my brother will be on the first plane from Sydney to break your hands.’
Maddy said, ‘Why are you like this?’
Maddy said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’
Maddy said, ‘Im leaving you – or at least you’re leaving my flat. Pack your stuff and get out.’
Maddy said, ‘I don’t want to hear you’re sorry again. Just get out.’
And in that moment, as her eyes darkened and a scowl took over her whole face, I understood that I had become my father, that I would end up drinking and taking pills to forget, and that I would one day give in to the despair of losing someone who was supposed to love me. I would be as pathetic as he was.
I got angrier than I have ever been before and I lashed out and I kept going, even when her hands were up over her head and she was cowering on the floor.
And then I washed my hands, her blood running in the bathroom sink, dribbling away, and I left, taking money and a credit card from her purse. The tears arrived as the anger disappeared.
In the park, my heart slowed and the anger rose again. I started walking because I needed to walk, and I kept going for hours. She shouldn’t have pushed me, shouldn’t have hurt me. She got what she deserved. I wasn’t going to be the only one suffering like my father. I expected the guilt to come but it didn’t. The only thought that kept circulating was, At least I’m not pathetic like him.
But it wasn’t enough because I knew that if I’d been a different man, Maddy would have still loved me. If not for the divorce and my mother’s callous disregard for my father, my whole life would have been something else.
And the need to make the one person who was responsible for every terrible thing pay for it all, gnawed at me.
