Page 100 of Dead Serious with Benefits
“I know, I know. I can’t promise she’s...okay, but I didn’t hear any?—”
“No, my...my birth mother.”
“Uh...what about her?”
“She was...a sweet woman. She had her problems, a lot of them I suspect, but she?—”
“Oh God, Arlo, no,” I groaned. “Don’t do the deathbed confessional.”
“But she loved my sister and me and always tried her best. She didn’t do very well, but she tried, and that’s more than can be said for a lot of people.”
I paused. “You have a sister?”
“Had,” he corrected softly. “She was a few years younger than me. Used to drive me crazy because she followed me everywhere and tried to do everything I did. All I wanted was to be left alone, but she always had to be doing things with me. My mom…mom would tell me to be patient with her. She loved her big brother,and she just wanted to be a part of my life. I remember she told me that if I wasn’t careful, I would miss the days when Kayla stopped being so attached to her big brother.”
My protest at his continuing story died as I felt a lump in my throat, sitting there, thick and heavy, because...well, that day had come, hadn’t it? I didn’t know the story, but it was obvious it would only end one way.
“And my mother she...she struggled. I managed to get information on her one day, and she went through a lot. Drugs, bipolar, and a string of abusive boyfriends that she could never shake,” he continued, his voice dull as if he were talking about people he barely knew rather than the people who had been his family. “Which includes my father, my biological father that is.”
“I figured,” I said softly, the only thing I could say because I realized that, despite not wanting to hear his ‘deathbed’ confessional, I was helpless to do anything but listen.
“His wasn’t a good life either, but where my mother’s life made her more fragile, broke her will, my father...it just broke him. Shattered him in so many ways I don’t think anyone could have fully understood. And when you break someone, sometimes all that’s left is the sharp edges, and that’s what my father was, all sharp edges, sharp words, but his fists...his fists were blunt,” Arlo said, his voice lilting at the end as if he were making a joke...or on the verge of tears.
“I read later, years later, that it was concluded that he had a drug-induced mental breakdown. He had struggled with psychotic episodes before, just...I can’t explain it to you, or how terrifying it was to a child. Ironically, when he was so disconnected from reality he barely recognized us or what we were to him, those were the times when he was the scariest but also the most harmless.”
I closed my eyes. I could sense where the story was going, but my inability to stop him was still strong. It must be what mymother had found, the thing she had been so eager to tell me. Here was a tragedy beyond words being laid out before me, the greatest horror of Arlo’s life, and my mother had been prepared to spill it to me like it was a regular brunch gossip session.
“Until he wasn’t,” Arlo whispered. “I don’t know what happened. I was...I was gone. I had left the house to go to a nearby park. Kayla had been driving me crazy that day; she wouldn’t leave me alone. My last words to her were for her to go away and stop bugging me, to leave me alone forever.”
“Arlo, you were?—”
“Eight. I know. I was eight and in a home that knew no stability and had an annoying younger sister, and I had no idea what my life could turn into. I have forgiven myself for that. I did that a long time ago, but it still hurts. And it will never stop hurting,” he said with a world-weary sigh. “But I wasn’t there. Maybe it was another one of his breaks; they found cocaine and PCP in his system, but maybe he was just...too broken. He stabbed my mother to death and cut my sister’s throat before opening up his own throat. I only survived because I was gone, driven away by a little sister who just wanted her big brother. At times, I think of it as her final gift to me, one that, like so many of her gifts, I never really appreciated until afterward.”
“You came home to that,” I whispered. “Didn’t you? You didn’t show up and find the cops there, you?—”
“Found them first,” he finished for me, almost gently, like it was I who was going through the horror rather than it being his memory, his trauma. “I...begged for them to wake up, even begged my father in the end, because an eight-year-old boy who comes home and finds his family lying in a puddle of their own blood doesn’t know what to do. I feared my father, but in that moment, I wanted him to wake up and fix it all.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “Arlo, I-I don’t know what to say.”
“What is there to say?” he said quietly. “Other than that was the story your mother tried to tell you. That was the story I’ve been holding onto. There’s more, of course, but those are...little things. The details are burned into my memory, no matter how long I live. Perhaps they’ll only disappear if I lose my memory. Maybe even then, I could be an old man with dementia, unable to remember the names of my siblings, but forever remembering how my mother was holding my sister’s body, or that my father had sat down in his favorite chair in the living room with a beer, drinking half of it before opening his throat.”
I closed my eyes, momentarily forgetting why we were locked in this dark room together, for him to find the strength to tell his story. “Can I just say something real quick? Something that’s going to come off as really inappropriate given the circumstances?”
He surprised me with a low chuckle. “You know, if I’m going to tie myself to someone like you, I would have to at the very least resign myself to the fact that you are not always going to be appropriate. But I’m far better than just resigned, I’m beyond accepting, and I have landed firmly in the category of adoring that about you. And I warn you, one day it will become exasperated, but I want that affection to be a constant as well.”
“Uh...good, I’ll process how I feel about that at another time,” I said with a shake of my head. “Because what I really want to say is ‘fuck you’, fuck you so much for that right now.”
“May I ask why?” he asked, and I was relieved to hear bewilderment rather than any other emotion, and at least that dull, almost dead tone in his voice had disappeared.
“Because, of all the stupid ass times to tell me somethingthatheavy and serious, you choose now? Especially because it comes off like you’ve already given up and you just...what? Wanted to make sure I knew before we’re brutally murdered?”
“Well...just in case?”
“No, fuck you.”
He laughed. “I’m sorry, but you might not want to admit that we’re in the situation we’re in, but we are. The chances of us not making it through this are extremely high. And I said that one day I would find the strength to tell you, and I did. Mind you, it was strength found from desperation and the reality of the situation, but strength nonetheless.”
“No, you are going to tell me that story again, you hear me?” I grumbled. “You’re going to tell me when we are out of this situation. When we’re back at your house, or we’re back in my room. We’re both going to be wearing fuzzy blankets, and there will be wine or something hard in a glass for us to drink. You’re going to tell me, and I’m going to hold your hand while you do it, and you’re going to feel better about telling me the story because it was a nice, healthy, good time...sort of good, good in the freeing, liberating sense.”
