Page 29 of A Taste For Trouble
“But…what about dinner?” she asked softly.
“I can’t eat yet,” I replied. “I’m going for a swim first.”
Without waiting for her reply, I went into my bedroom and changed into my swimming trunks. She was still in the living room when I came out in a bathrobe and slippers. I gave her a polite nod as I walked into the elevator and pressed the buttonfor the pool. Rose said nothing, merely watched me silently until the elevator doors closed.
The pool was empty when I got there, which was a blessing. Gran went for an evening swim sometimes, but I was glad she wasn’t here today, because I didn’t have it in me to talk to her right now. I dived into the deep end of the pool, and all the memories of that night washed over me as I went under.
It was my seventh birthday, and as usual, my father was too busy to attend my party. My mother smiled her way through the party, but her smile slipped after the last guest left, and she began to call my father frantic with worry because he had promised to come home in time to cut the cake.
Her calls went unanswered, and he strolled in a few hours later, reeking of liquor. He patted me on the head before he sent me off to bed. But I couldn’t fall asleep, so I ventured into the hallway. And that’s when I heard it. The sound of a slap and my mother’s cry. It went on for quite some time. I sat on the stairs, wanting to rush to her aid, but terrified to move, lest he attack me as well. When she cried out loudly, I couldn’t hold myself back, and I barged into the room to rescue her. I found her cowering on the floor while my father was standing over her with his belt in his hands.
A wave of helplessness took me under, and I thrashed my way to the end of the pool, resting my arms on the edge before I dived in again. That was the night I understood the truth about my parents’ abusive marriage. And after that night, my father didn’t feel the need to hide the abuse from me. But my mother began to lock her door just to protect me from it.
My father spent very little time with us, but whenever he came home, I’d stand outside their door, trying to get to her. To rescue her. To help her. But there was nothing I could do. Mom made me promise I wouldn’t tell anybody what he was doing to her because she loved him.
Love. People wrote poems about the emotion, but I knew it as nothing but a weakness. One that turned the bravest soul I knew into a weeping mess, unable to break the cycle of violence because she was trapped in it by love. Every time he hurt my mom, my father would break down crying and promise to do better because he loved her right back. If only she would stop making him angry. Didn’t she know he was under a lot of pressure at work? Why did she nag him about the other women? Why was she so possessive? It was always her fault, and never his. And she still put up with it. For love.
She would play music loudly when he beat her, so I wouldn’t have to hear it. But I could hear everything since I stood with my ears glued to her door. To this day, the sound of music took me right back into my nightmares, where the sound of my mother’s cries mixed with the strains of the guitar, where the drums clashed with the sound of my father’s slaps.
As I grew older, I begged her to leave him, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it because she really believed his love for her made up for his abuse. Our nightmare ended only with his death, and it took my mother years of therapy to accept that she was trapped in an abusive marriage, and that it wasn’t love she felt for him, but fear. Sheer, abject fear.
She was healed now, as was I. But I could never forget the true nature of what people called love. It wasn’t an emotion. It was merely a mechanism of control. And I wanted nothing to do with it.
I did forty laps of the pool without a break before I got my anger back on the leash. I felt calmer as I climbed out of the pool and slightly ashamed of the way I had walked out on Rose without a word. I hoped she didn’t think it was because of the way we ended things in the hot tub.
When I went back to the apartment, the living room was empty, and the photograph was gone. In its place was anotherpicture, taken a year earlier, with Rose, Aunt Polly, Mom, and me smiling at the camera from a picnic blanket. It was probably taken at the annual Harvest Festival, and funnily enough, Rose was sitting on my lap. There was a note next to the picture.
Have asked Trev to crop out the moms in the picture,it said.
It was as if she understood that the previous picture had sent me into a bad place emotionally, and she was trying to get me out of it, while still not intruding on me. My nose twitched as I smelled something delicious, and I turned to stare at the oven. That smelled familiar, I thought, as I walked into the open-plan kitchen and bent down to peer at the oven.
There, bubbling away in a pan, was what looked like lasagna. Rose’s famous lasagna. The one Aunt Polly always made when Mom took me for a visit.
“I thought you could use some comfort food right now,” she said from the doorway, and I straightened up hastily. There was a hard lump in my throat, and this time, it wasn’t desire. It was gratitude.
She didn’t know why I’d reacted to the photograph the way I did, but she knew I was upset. And she was offering the only form of comfort she could. Through food. And happy memories.
“I can’t wait for it to be ready,” I said gruffly.
“Ten more minutes,” she replied with a soft smile that wound itself right around my heart.
Just then, there was a loud cry of distress from the window outside the kitchen. We whirled around in surprise.
“That sounds like Sweetpea,” cried Rose, running to the window. She slid the window up and poked her head out to see where he was.
“Oh no! How did you get there, you jackass?” she wailed, and Sweetpea miaowed plaintively.
Rose drew her head in and looked terrified as she turned to me.
“He’s stuck on the ledge next to the kitchen window. I think he was trying to get into the kitchen, but the window was shut and he got stuck outside.”
“Why’d he do a damn fool thing like that?” I asked in disgust, and she glared at me.
“Because he is a cat, Dominic. And cats get stuck on ledges sometimes. It’s a fact of nature. Now, help me get him off the fucking ledge.”
“Hey, he got on it, which means he can get off all by himself,” I retorted.
“If he could, he’d be in here, going for your balls right now. But he can’t, which is why he’s still stuck outside, bawling his little heart out,’ she snapped. “Now, help me bring him in and feed him some lasagna.”
