Page 5 of The Grinch who Loved Me
Rick,
Ihate to do this to you. And to Ryland. He is my life and the only reason I stuck around for so long. And now that he is old enough, you both don’t need me anymore. I have lived in the quiet for too long. I can’t anymore. I need to live a life where I can speak my mind and be the person I was before I met you. Before I allowed you to steal my voice and live in the tomb that we call a home. Ryland doesn’t mind the quiet. And that’s why I’m leaving him here. He will do better with you than he ever could with me. I talked to his school. He just has to finish this year and then he will graduate. Encourage him to finish. Please. I hope you don’t give up on him. That you don’t go more silent because of this. It would kill me. I know you have issues that have never been resolved like they should have and that doesn’t help with your dislike of people and talking, but I can’t keep trying. I wish you the best and thank you for my son. Tell him I love him and someday, I hope to see him again. I need to find myself and I hope you do as well.”
Tillie
Ryland’s eyes went hot and he had to blink hard to keep his tears inside.
“I can’t believe it. How could she leave? Why didn’t you try to stop her?”
His dad shook his head, “I couldn’t have if I wanted to. Your mother is right son. I don’t like people or crowds. It makes my head feel funny and I know that isn’t normal. That most people can be around others without feeling sick, but I have never been one of those. And I know I was selfish when I met your mother, but I had to have her. She was this angel and I ruined her. Ruined it all. Fuck!”
His dad slumped to his knees and then fell forward onto his fists.
Ryland’s eyes felt hot and he squeezed them shut. And then walked over to his dad and knelt by him.
“We don’t need her. We can do this without her.”
His dad nodded and looked over at him, “I want to agree with you and say that you are right, that we don’t need her, but I would be lying. I don’t know how we are going to do this.”
Ryland didn’t know what to say. He was still reeling that his mother had left in the first place. On Christmas Day no less.
He stayed with his dad and sat on the floor next to him. His dad cried and Ryland hated seeing his father this broken.
And right then and there,.Ryland knew deep inside him that no woman could be trusted and that one could only rely on himself.
His dad shut down.
When he got back to the house and saw the small tree, he ripped it out of the wall and threw it out in the backyard and smashed a few things and then collapsed in his bed where he refused to eat or do anything for a week and then, right before New Years, he shoved everything that Tillie had left behind in a few boxes and lit them on fire in the front yard.
He watched everything burn to ashes, shoved the rest of the things that reminded him of her up in the attic and then took it a step further and shut the garage down to the public.
Unless it was one of his prior clients or one that wanted to use him because he was that good at fixing cars.
He would charge them a ridiculous amount and they would pay it happily. And Rick threw himself into work.
Ryland wanted to quit school but his dad refused. “You need to see this through. Not for her, but because you worked hard to get to where you are and I need your smart brain when it’s time.”.
Ryland agreed with his dad, and put his head to the grindstone and finished school and didn’t have to go back for his senior year.
His dad had him working in the garage with him full-time the minute he graduated.
He and Ryland would work together on one, ‘79 Chevrolet Camaro.
They took the entire thing apart and slowly found the right parts to put it back together.
They painted it cherry red themselves and they would take it for drives all over Florida.
And they would talk. Rick would tell him how much he hated his mom. How she had ripped his heart out because he was a little quiet and didn’t feel comfortable around people. That he had a feeling he was autistic but never got tested for it. And now that he was an adult, there wasn’t much he could do anyway.
Ryland hated that. Hated that his dad was in so much pain because of a woman.
They weren’t worth it. None of the girls were.
He had seen a few pretty ones around the small town they were from and at school. But he knew their past. And knew that they were pretty enough, but they were all shallow and callus.
Not only had these girls slept with a few of the football players, but they were the popular girls and they looked down at the kids that were a little different from them.
Mainly anyone who wasn’t in the ‘in’ crowd. Ryland knew immediately to stay far from these girls even before his mom left.
