Page 49 of Don't Bite the Boy Next Door
“But all along,” he mutters, “as my service continued, and I saw and did things that my father would have done, but that I couldn’t reconcile, I began to grow into myself. I said ‘no’ – I took the high moral ground, and I got the hell out of the army the first chance I could. And I knew, I realised that it wasmewho was weak, me who should have stood up to him, me who failedher, not the other way round. And I feel sick at the thought that I’d looked at her, thought of her, as he did.” His voice dips to a barely perceptible whisper as he adds, “and I’m so ashamed.”
I sit still, silent. I want to go to him, comfort him, but I know it’s too soon. He has shared the depths of his despair with me, but that is all he can give right now.
I breathe quietly, saying nothing, as he covers his face with his hands and turns back to the window.
Looking towards the door, I see his mother leaning against the doorjamb, her eyes full of a lifetime of grief. I don’t know how long she has been there, or what she has heard.
“Oh, Ryan,” she says gently, shaking her head just the same way he does. “I never needed you to save me.”
“Mother?” he chokes, taking his hands from his face and spinning to face the door.
“Come sit,” she says quietly, walking towards the table and pulling out the chair facing him, indicating he should take the one opposite.
I leave the room speedily, giving her a brief smile as I go. She doesn’t return it, her thoughts no doubt already on how she can heal her broken son, and although I know it is wrong, when I get to my room I strain to hear what is being said.
“Ryan,” she says, as I hear the soft scrape of another chair on the timber floor and imagine he must also be sitting, “we need to talk.”
“Mother.”
“Please,” she sighs, “just hear me out. I understand now, I understand why you didn’t answer my letters.”
He says nothing.
“I wrote every week, from the very first week you went overseas, years I wrote, and never a response. Now, hearing you talk to your beautiful girl,” she pauses, “I finally understand. But there’s somethingyouneed to understand.”
“Please, don’t,” he groans.
She goes on as if she hadn’t heard.
“I never needed you to protect me, son. I was always working to protect you. When you hid from his fists, it was me who put you into those hiding places. When he lashed out at you, I put myself in front of you – not because I was weak, because I was just strong enough to protect you, but I couldn’t protect us both. I didn’t want you to save me, don’t you understand, I wanted to save you.”
“Why didn’t you leave him?” he asks, his voice agonised, “why did we stay?”
“I tried to leave him,” she says quietly, her voice gentle, almost as though she is talking about a stranger’s life, rather than her own. “After we married, we lived out here, isolated. The only people I ever saw were your grandparents, and I didn’t want them to know what their son had become, what the forces had done to him. I was ashamed too, ashamed that I was frightened of him, that I let him hit me, that I still loved him, back then, and hoped for his salvation. But that all changed the day he beat you so badly he broke your arm, and you fell onto that wooden stake. I begged him to let me take you to the doctor, he wouldn’t.”
“I remember,” Ryan says quietly, “the day of the swing.”
“Yes,” she says, “the day of the swing. By the time I’d convinced him that you would tell the doctor it was a swing accident and not violence that caused the break or the stab, your arm had swollen to the size of a football, and your side was bleeding terribly. I feared for your life that you were bleeding internally. Yet, still your father procrastinated, argued. So, I ran next door, here, to your grandparents’ house, and begged them for help. Only your dad followed and beat me senseless on the lawn out front. Your granddaddy stepped in, and there was a terrible, terrible fight. Your grandma scrambled you and I into the truck and took us to town to the hospital. I thought then, we all thought that I could leave him.”
“Why didn’t we?” Ryan whispers.
“Because he followed, and he came to me in my hospital bed that night, and he told me that if I left him, he would take you. And I would never, ever find you.”
“And he would have,” Ryan says, his voice a monotone.
“Yes, he would have,” she sighs, “and I couldn’t bear the thought of you, alone, undefended, with that monster.”
“And so, you stayed,” Ryan mutters.
“I stayed to protect you,” she says gently, “to see you grow and leave home. I knew the army wasn’t for you, you were always such a sensitive boy. But it afforded you the opportunity to get far, far away from his influence, where you could lead your own life and grow into the man I knew you would become. A mannothinglike his father.”
“With this guilt?” he groans, “this legacy?”
I know he must have covered his face again because his words are muffled.
“My darling son,” I hear her voice break, “you have no need for guilt, I never regretted my decisions. And you don’t need to fear being like your father, it isn’t in you, it never has been.”
I hear a chair scrape, soft footsteps, and more muffled sobs, two sets. I smile, knowing my poor broken prince might finally have found a little closure on an obviously painful past. Oddly, I too feel more at peace with my past, having shared it with him.
‘Maybe we are both not so broken now? Maybe we can be friends? Maybe more than friends? That kiss…’
Moving to the computer to continue my Christmas shopping, I see another message has just arrived from Pru.
Opening it, all thoughts of friendship, and kisses, go out the window.
