Page 48 of Baring All
It's as if all the oxygen in the room has been sucked out, and I can’t draw any into my lungs. A buzzing starts in my head, like an angry swarm of bees. My vision hazes over. But then I feel the softest touch on my cheek, as if a butterfly is caressing my skin, and I cling to it. Focusing my attention on the gentle stroking fingers, I call on my years of training.
Stuck in a hostile territory, surrounded by the enemy, you can’t afford to freak out. That’s the quickest way to get yourself or one of your brothers-in-arms killed. So you learn how to calm yourself in the midst of panic. Tonight, those years of learning help me to pull myself back from the edge, from the dark that waits to consume you.
Turning into her hand, I drop tiny kisses on Eloise’s palm. She rubs her thumb along the edge of my jaw, and I’m grateful for her anchoring touch. “Bear, you can stop if you need to.”
“No, I started this. I’ll see it through,” I say through numb lips, praying I can, in fact, “see it through”.
“All right. But you can stop at any time you need to. Okay?”
I nod, more grateful for this woman by the minute. Shaking my head to clear the sight and sounds and smells, how real it all seems from my mind, I take Eloise’s hand in mine. And I hold on for dear life. “My mother knew what my father would do – attempt to do – in retaliation for my insolence, so she stepped between us. My father pushed her out of the way, and she fell. Hit her head. It – she – that’s what killed her. She died trying to protect me, protecting her.” Jesus, just saying those words out loud for the first time since my childhood therapy session cuts deep.
Cuts soul deep.
And that, right there, lays bare the guilt I’ve tried to live with since I was little more than a boy. I was the reason my mother died that night. Yeah, you can wrap it up in as pretty a bow as you like, telling me my father’s the one that killed her. That it was a sad inevitability of her staying with him and taking his abuse.
But there’s no convincing me that she’d have died that night if I hadn’t challenged my father. My plan had been to save her from the old bastard. That’s why I worked so diligently at the gym every day.
In that moment, my mother thought she was doing the right thing – a mother protecting her son. So, bottom line, I killed her as surely as if I had been the one who pushed her.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
Tugging her hand from mine, Eloise straddles my lap and wraps me up in her embrace. She drops kisses back and forth across my forehead, a hand cradling the back of my head.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I can’t even begin to imagine how that felt.”
“Other than the therapist I went to after – you’re the only other person who wasn’t there that night who knows what exactly what happened. And how I’ve carried this burden of guilt for causing her death with me all these years.”
“Bear, I – wait, what? I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
“Don’t follow?”
“Yeah. I don’t follow your reasoning on why you caused her death.” Some of the irritation at her words must show on my face since she holds up a hand. “Hold on. Before you get mad at me, I’m not trying to be a bitch. I just want to understand.”
“It’s pretty simple. If I had knocked the old man out cold instead of just breaking his nose, he wouldn’t have come at me. She wouldn’t have stepped between us to protect me from him whaling on me, he wouldn’t have pushed. She wouldn’t have hit her head and died.”
The anger that builds with every word that spews from my mouth feels good. It pushes aside the hollow sickness in the pit of my stomach. Wrapping my hands around Eloise’s waist, I go to lift her onto the bed beside me. But she’s having none of it. She simply attaches herself to me like a limpet and refuses to let go.
“Babe, stop. Please,” she whispers in my ear. “Please?” Her heartfelt plea stops me in my tracks. “Will you listen for a moment?” I lean back against the headboard, Eloise still in my lap, and wait.
She gives me a moment before she speaks. “I can see how you could think that. I do, trust me. I have demons of my own that help me understand that sentiment. More than you could know. But you’re not being fair on yourself.
“They were the parents, you the child. They were responsible for the choices made. You had to fall in with those choices.” Reaching out, she cups my cheek, looking deep into my eyes. So deep I can feel it all the way down to my soul. “But you were a child. Yes, a teenage boy heading for manhood, but still a child. The events of that night were the consequences of choices made by adults.
“I get why she stayed – too often in my line of work, you see how a spouse is broken down over time until they lose all sense of self. Until they believe the bullshit story they’re constantly fed. Believe they can’t make it out there on their own. Flawed and based on the lies they’re trained to believe, they don’t feel they have any other choice than to stay – that the choice has been taken away from them. Some women can eventually find it within themselves to leave, others never do.
“Your father’s drinking – that’s not something you could have controlled. It’s a sickness, but one that can be dealt with. If he’d really wanted to be better, do better by you and your mom, he could have made the choice to get help. But you? You were an innocent child caught in the middle of a difficult situation.”
“What was I supposed to do? Huh? It wasn’t her fault. I couldn’t just ignore what he was doing.”
“I know, babe. I know. I’m not saying itwasher fault. What I am saying is, it wasn’tyourfault either. Just as you did what you did out of love and a desire to protect her, so did she. You are a wonderful man – loyal, smart, funny, caring, with an endless supply of love to share.
“A man any woman would be lucky to have by her side. Everyone else can see it but you. You’ve locked that part of you away from the world, to protect your heart from loss and hurt. In the end, you’re depriving yourself of the opportunity to have someone love you as much as your mother did.”
Her words are like arrows, piercing the soft underbelly of my vulnerability. Hitting hard. Hurting like fuck. Words I’m not ready to hear. Not now. Possibly not ever. I need to get out. Away.
“Elle, I need you to hop off a second – gotta use the bathroom.”
