Thunder #36
Everything inside of me told me to call my friends. To ask them what I should do. But that meant that I had to tell them everything that had happened. The way that I’d used Michael because I just couldn’t leave him alone. The way that I’d begun drinking and partying to forget all the things that I’d done. They already knew that I’d been pregnant, of course, and they had probably thought that the loss was because of the wild life I’d been living. They didn’t judge me, or at least, way less than I did myself.
But the thought of Caitlin rolling her eyes uninhibitedly at me, or Megan shaking her head at me, while I was wondering whether or not to help out my estranged ex, was simply too much. They both seemed so settled now. Caitlin was talking about babies and trying to convince Chris that they would have plenty of room for one in their apartment. Megan was sending Snapchats every now and then, depicting dinner arrangements or cups with tea in front of the T.V., never showing her mysterious boyfriend but always showing how happy she was. Neither of them needed me, it seemed. I was just the single mom who became addicted to everything too fast and who would once in a while park my child at their apartments, leaving the responsibility to someone else than myself. If anything, they would tell me that I should just go and see him. That I should make friends with him. That it would help in the future, that I always had someone who could take care of my boy. But I didn’t need their advice. I wanted someone to come and tell me: Stay at home. You got this. You can be a perfect parent all by yourself. No matter how much you miss him. Don’t go to him.
My own inner voice didn’t supply the reason I needed and before I knew it, I stood outside of his door.
( ... )
“Cas! Christ. Come in, how long have you stood there?” He ushered me inside of his apartment, and I entered in a flurry of winter clothes and snowflakes.
“It began to snow a lot. I- I wasn’t out there for long.” I lied, and we both knew it. I had been standing out there for the better part of 15 minutes before I mustered the strength to knock on his door. Two cigarette buds were out there as a silent proof of it, but they were rapidly becoming covered by the snow. He cocked an eyebrow but said nothing, and I was thankful that he at least had that courtesy. He looked tired, I thought. The small lines around his eyes had grown deeper since I last saw him. It felt like decades ago that he smiled and laughed with me, and that added to the awkwardness of me being here. I cleared my throat of something that wasn’t there and looked around to avoid looking more at him.
“Holy sh … shit. You’ve … redecorated?” The empty walls and the even emptier hall helped me through the strange silence.
This looked like nothing I remembered, and it was simply too empty and too unfamiliar not to address.
“Uh … you could say that.”
“Where are the posters and stuff? The dresser?”
“Already moved it.” His reply was short and dry, as if I knew exactly what he was talking about.
“Moved … it?”
“Yup. Going to drive again tomorrow.”
“I’m a bit lost here. Driving where?”
“Storage room. I’m moving.” He used the same dry tone again. “I figured Yasmin would’ve told you.”
“Um … no. When?”
“I’ll be loading the truck for the last time tomorrow. That’s why you’re here.”
I felt like a giant question mark.
“You wanted my help to … move?”
He chuckled with a strange lifeless voice. “No. It’s a cupboard I need help with. I could saw it to pieces or smash it with a hammer, but I figured, maybe I could keep it and sell it to someone. But then I need help to take it down.”
“Wauw. Michael the merchant.” I teased to try and wrap my head around the fact.
“Yeah. London life is expensive. But I guess you know that already.”
“Hold up. London??”
“Yeah.” He simply shrugged and walked down the hallway. No explanation, nothing, only this weirdly cold behavior and me who was left in a state of shock. It wasn’t until a moment later when I heard him calling my name, that I managed to snap out of it for a moment.
“It’s in here, Cas. Coming?”
( ... )
After a bit of instruction, I found myself, trying to keep most of the cupboard from collapsing while Michael screwed out one of the sides. Much to my surprise, it was not an easy task, and I understood why he needed the help.
“It’s … fucking gigantic, this thing. Where the hell did you get a cupboard like this?”
He was crouched down on the other side of the cupboard, and I could just see him from my strained position. He was holding a couple of screws between his lips, and he removed them before replying.
“It was my dad’s. He died.”
“My condolences. I’m sorry -” I wanted to show empathy by saying his name. I found that I couldn’t, and my sentence became strangely amputated.
“It’s alright. He was an arse. Everyone’s happier without him.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I knew the backstory, of course, but this was neither the time nor the place to try to be a therapist. I didn’t feel like it, either. My mind was swarmed with the fact that Michael was moving - to London - and I’d likely never see him again.
“Um. How … Why …” My sentence was cut short by him, unfastening one side of the cupboard and putting it aside while I was struggling to stabilize the rest of the thing. As the side was effectively off, he procured some rope and strips and went to my side of the piece to connect the remaining three sides. The question I was trying to ask died on my tongue and began to hurt inside of me.
“Hold.” He reached for the top of the closet and tried to secure it with the rope.
“I am holding it.” I huffed, while the whole piece of furniture wobbled dangerously.
“Here … and … there.” He fastened the rope some more, and the cupboard stood more still than before.
“What about … “
“What about what, Cas?” He secured some strips and I let go of the furniture. I felt the blood running back into my arms.
“Teddy. What about Teddy? When are you going to see him?”
He furrowed his brows and clenched his jaw. I could see the question was causing him pain, and I felt a strange joy from it.
“Go and have a break. I’ll fetch some drinks and tell you about it.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to know what his plans were. I didn’t want any of this to happen. Instead of telling him that, I just nodded and went to sit in his living room.
( … )
The room was bared, except for moving boxes and a few items here and there. I didn’t know where to sit or what to do, so I just stood, waiting for him to bring us some sodas.
“Here.” He entered the room and handed me a glass of sparkling coke. I took it but couldn’t drink it. The shock that had started as soon as I heard the news had multiplied several times. The feeling that I couldn’t talk properly to him was making it even worse.
He sat down against the wall and took a large sip from his glass. His seeming obliviousness finally made the tipping point.
“It.s … it’s … three-hundred pounds, Michael. Three hundred pounds for the cheapest flight to London. How did you think this was a good idea? I don’t have that kind of money.” I almost snarled at him from my standing position. He looked up at me, his tired expression more present than ever
“I’ll pay for it all, Cas. Flight, food, everything.”
“Oh, great. So I’ll just put an infant on board of the flight, or? Tell the stewardesses how to feed him during the trip?”
“You’ll go with him. At least until he’s older. I’ll pay for the both of you.”
“Oh, so I’ll just stop everything that I’m doing and go to an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COUNTRY so that you can see your boy? Why do you think I’d accept that?”
“Or I’ll come to you.” He rubbed his temples with the lower parts of his hands, as if trying to procure a solution to make me less mad. “Can you hear me out?”
“I really don’t want to, Michael. What were you thinking? And what about … the pub, and … Yasmin? James?”
“Yasmin’s the boss of the pub now. James will come and visit once in a while, and so will she.”
“Wait … what? That pub is … was … your dream. When did this happen?” I was dumbfounded. This night held so many surprises that it made my head spin, and my anger had been replaced with confusion.
“It’s a long and dull story, Cas. Things happened and …”
“Things … happened?”
“Yeah.”
What?
“I’m at a loss for words here. But … your … family? Your friends?” Teddy. And me.
“They’re all supporting me.”
“But why didn’t you tell me? Shouldn’t I have a say in this?” “I don’t need your permission to go, Cas.” His eyes looked tired. I clenched my teeth and tried to conceal the anger and sadness that was suddenly overwhelming me. I felt tears trying to escape my eyes and I turned away.
“Did you need help with the rest of the cupboard?”
He hesitated before replying. “Sure. Let’s get it down.”
( … )
We worked in silence. It seemed like thousands of question were occupying my mind, but they never had the courage to let themselves be asked. Like that, I stayed silent. It was only if he gave me a command or instruction, that I briefly nodded in return. The cupboard was coming apart slowly, and the shelves in it were being taken down one by one. In the very back of one of the top ones, I suddenly found something that I hadn’t expected in a million years.
“There’s … something here. A … teddy bear of some kind?”
“Oh. That’s where it was.” He simply took it out of my hands and put it on the floor, a slight smile on his face. “I was afraid he had gone missing.”
The strangeness of the situation prompted me to ask.
“Is it yours?” It didn’t look like an old, worn out toy from his childhood, it seemed too … new. It was a regular brown teddy bear, with long legs and an embroidered text on the back - “My teddy”.
“No.” He paused and looked at the bear as if deep in thought. “I bought it for him. For Teddy.”
Another pause. “I just never got around to giving it to him.”
“When did you buy it?” Something about Michael’s face made it feel like I already knew the answer. Even more so when he looked at me, his eyes looking like he had lived for a thousand years and had now grown weary.
“The night you were admitted. Got it at the gift shop.” He said, quietly, as the wall between us finally began to crumble. My hands had covered my mouth with the surprise that somehow wasn’t a surprise at all.
“You came?”
“I did.” Memories of the night my boy was born were flying through my brain. The pain. The uncertainty. The anxiety. Richard. Michael. And finally, the joy -
“You came, and bought a teddy bear, and left again?”
“That … he came too. Richard. He saw me, and I figured I would only be a disruption.”
My head was swimming with thoughts.
“But … why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he say that you were there?”
Michael chuckled, the thought of his old rival that had now long left the premises, now merely an amusement to him.
“Why would he? He had won.”
The strange wording made me think about Richard and the deception he had put me through. A well-known anger was bubbling underneath it all, and I suppressed it.
“Why didn’t you text me back? Call me?”
He shrugged in an effort to push the memories away.
“I figured you had texted the wrong guy.”
I couldn’t reply. Of course I hadn’t texted the wrong guy. I never wanted Richard to be there, but the pain became too much to handle on my own. Somehow, back then, I knew deep down that Teddy wasn’t his. I knew that the birth of him would be the end of us. Of course, I couldn’t tell Michael this. I just sat down on the floor and wondered how one person could single handedly fuck up her life as much as I’d done. I felt like I had become three decades older in the blink of an eye.
( … )
“You need this.” He held a Guinness in his outstretched arm and one in the other. I took it as he sat down in front of me, his back against the frame of the bed
“I’ve quit drinking, Michael.”
“Yeah. Same here.” He said and took a sip of the cold bottle. The taste made him do a strange grimace. After a moment where we did nothing but take sips of our beers, he decided to break the silence that had once again enveloped us.
“Is he at Liz’ place?”
“Yeah.” I looked at him and felt that the beer had already begun to work as intended. I procured a cigarette from the crumbled package in my jeans pocket, and he pushed over an old cup to use as tray. “I’ll never get used to the fact that you’re just calling her Liz.”
“Elizabeth seems a bit too formal for her. She’s more of a Liz.”
“I meant that I won’t get used to the fact that you two know each other.” I lit up my cigarette.
“Ah.” He nodded. “Ask her about it one day.”
“So, you’re not going to tell me?” He shook his head and took another sip of the beer.
“She’s a friend. Can’t betray her confidence. Can I bum a smoke?”
“Right. And go ahead.” I drank some more too, and the taste felt like liquid heaven. We sat like that in silence, smoking and drinking our beers until they had emptied and he fetched new ones. Oceans of time and fuck-ups and mistakes had passed between us, but right now we seemed to drift along together.
“London, huh.” I said, and it was more of a statement than it was a question.
“Yup.” His eyes were tired and the darkest blue I had ever seen. Everything in me wanted to yell at him to stay, to not leave us behind like this, but I couldn’t. What I could do and what I decided to do, aided by the beers, was all the more horrifying. Before I could stop it, the old jealousy monster came roaring back. Apparently with a vengeance.
“So aren’t you going to leave some girl broken-hearted?”
He looked at me with the saddest smile on his face, and I could have shot and buried myself right then and there. Why did I say that? Why, oh why, oh fuck-shit-WHY …
He ran his hand through his hair and fired the metaphorical gun.
“There is someone.” He looked down, shying away from me. I felt like I was dying, and yet, my voice stayed unfazed. All is good. All is good here. I feel no pain.
“See? London is a bad idea. And long-distance relationships never work out.” Not that I want it to.
He looked up at me and chuckled in a strained, low manner.
“If you say so, Cas.”
“Cassie.”
“Sorry.”
We sat there, the silence and the pain dividing and uniting us simultaneously, until finally, I got up from the floor.
“I should get going. It’s getting late.”
“Sure.” He got up as well. “Well, shit …” He exclaimed as he looked out the window and my eyes followed his. The heavy snow from earlier had now turned into a full-blown blizzard, and it was nearly impossible to even see the streetlights. The streets were covered in a thick blanket of snow, the wind was throwing large duvets of snow through the air, obscuring the visibility for everyone. The streets were completely and utterly empty.
“Ah, Christ. What …” I sighed with the frustration of having to go home through all of this.
“You’re staying here.” Michael suddenly said, and I turned around to look at him. “It’s … I don’t want you getting hurt or something like that.”
It felt like I was exasperated down to the smallest bone in my body. I didn’t want to battle my way through tons of snow, this night had been tiring enough in itself. And like that, I agreed with him.
(... )
I don’t know what bothered me the most. If it was the sound of his snoring from the sofa in the living room or if it was the fact that he slept so soundly, so safely, while I was here, in his bed, feeling anything but sleepy. He slept like he didn’t have a care in the world. He was on his way to the future - new job, new country, a whole new life, and I was not a part of it. I was the accessory that came along with the child he would see now and then, whenever it suited him the best. I was stuck in this small town, without a job, without any possibilities, without a partner to share it all with. Just a burden to society. A single mother stuck on welfare. People would look at me in the streets and talk about me behind my back, and I had no one. I shifted from angry to sad to frustrated to angry again, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided that enough was enough, and that I had to get up and out and home. My plans of sneaking away in the night and thereby avoiding the dreaded goodbyes were obstructed as I heard the noise from the flushing of the toilet. He had awakened.
“Cas?” He asked, surprised, as he was caught off-guard while exiting the bathroom. He looked at the winter coat draped over my arm and put two and two together. “Are you leaving?”
I nodded and looked anywhere but at him. The lump in my throat was threatening to expose me.
“Have you slept?”
Again, I nodded. It was a lie.
“I don’t think it’s gotten better. Probably more the opposite.” He gestured towards the street, where the snow was still everywhere.
“I’ll call a cab.” I replied and tried to ignore the way he looked. Pajama pants and nothing more. He reminded me of mornings when he would hold my hair and rub my back while my morning sickness made existing almost unbearable, and the memory made my heart ache.
“A cab?” He chuckled. “They can’t make it through in weather like this.”
I clenched my fists and tried to will the lump of grief inside of me to disappear. It worked for a second, and the anger came back to replace it.
“How can you do it?” I spat out and finally looked at him. “To her?”
“To … who?” He looked perplexed for a second.
“The girl … woman … whoever it is. Don’t you think you should … i don’t know … stop being a jerk to women?” My voice became strangely high-pitched at the end, but I was already so far gone that it didn’t matter. Hey everybody! Jealous Cassie is back …
“A … jerk?” He looked even more perplexed, and I got angrier by the second.
“You know what you did to me.” I hissed at him, my eyes burning with the feelings that had never really gotten out. “Why are you leaving someone else behind again? Why are you doing this again?”
“What the hell are you on about, Cas?” He raised his voice at me. “This is nothing like … us, back then.”
“Oh, but it is. Tired with your old life? Just kick out the girlfriend and move on. New life, new fun, new everything, none of the complications. How can you … how can you do that to her?”
“New fun?” I could see him getting angry, and I felt oddly content about that. “New … fun?”
“Yeah. Just like back then. You were probably swimming in sluts before I even left the pub. Oh, wait. You were. Was she any good?” I had now begun full-on yelling at him, and I felt hot, angry tears leaving my eyes. He stood there in front of me, jaws clenching, unable to stop the attack I’d begun.
“Did you enjoy it? Hmm? And are you gonna enjoy yourself this time too? New pub, new girls, and this time in London where they all look soooo fine -” I mocked him, each word causing him a new blow. He didn’t back down, though. With some kind of fierceness in his eyes, he took a step in front of me and it felt like he was going to push me out of his way. I stood my ground.
“You … know … nothing … about the time I had, Cassie.” He snarled lowly as he had gotten close. “You know nothing. So shut up.”
“Like hell I’m shutting up. I’m not going to stand and watch as you wreck another girl’s life. I just hope you haven’t gotten this one knocked up. Have you?”
The unexpected attack was below any moral standards I had left, and I could see it in the way he backed away.
“I’m not ... “ He hesitated. “I’m not with her like that.”
“Oh, that’s such a surprise, Michael. The no-commitment-guy is not in a relationship? SHOCKING.”
He leaned back against the wall and put his hands against his temples, as if trying to make me disappear like a bad hallucination.
“She doesn’t want me, Cas. Alright?” His eyes were pleading for me to stop now, but I couldn’t. I had found a wounded man and proceeded to kick him in the guts over and over again.
“Have you asked her? Have you asked her about it? I’m thinking you don’t have the ability to form a question like that.” He looked back at me, and something - the need to retaliate perhaps - made the shine in his eyes come back. “Should I, Cas? You think I should? Are you an expert on this, or?”
“Fuck yes, you should! I’m not going to let this happen to someone else ...” What the fuck am I doing.
He went into the living room, back straight and head held high, as he searched the room for his phone.
Now he’s going to call her. Why the fuck did I do this to myself.
“There. There it is. Happy now?” He went back into the hallway where I stood. For some reason, I had to see it through. I had to endure the pain, again.
“Dial her number.”
“Fine.” He snarled and opened the phone. I could see him finding the call option and tried to dream that I was somewhere else in this very moment.
Suddenly, a the muffled noise of a song playing could be heard somewhere. I recognized it immediately. C’mere by Interpol.
“ … It's way too late to be this locked inside ourselves
The trouble is that you're in love with someone else
It should be me. Oh, it should be me …”
My phone was ringing.
