23. “Numb”Cage of fingers entrapped his eyes, eyes that were slowly changing from hazel to blood red, tears drizzling down to caress his chin and then dribble down to the floor. Pupils dilated to the breaking point, he was a demon with... Closed my eyes and leaned back against the bathtub. Thankfully the door was locked and Gavin was asleep. Didn’t need him to hear this, didn’t want him to see this.
“Why?” he asked after the silence burned into our ears and all it sounded like was the rasping of fingers across a chalkboard, nails stabbing into flesh, scissors snipping skin.
“Why did you start drinking again?” I said. Fingers fell, his face was so haggard and destroyed. It looked like he hadn’t expected me to ever discover that. How I wished that I hadn’t. Because then I might have thought more before taking the scissors, I might have looked at how strong he was being and never been so weak. Or that could have spurred me on to take more drastic measures. My arms were shaking, the cuts were hurting, water spilled down into them and filled the gaps. The warmth was rapidly leaving me, making me cold and clammy. Tiles made pockmarks on the soles of my feet.
“It was only once.” he whispered. His gaze shifted from the floor to my face. Pupils melted into blood. It had to have been more than once. Jay never stopped at once, he always did something a few more times, even if it was something that he didn’t like. Perhaps to piss people off, perhaps to destroy himself. “You were still in the hospital. I...I didn’t know if I was going to lose you. It was THERE.” Last word accompanied with a frantic gesture that soon deteriorated into covering his eyes again. “I’m sorry.”
My fingers had crept up my arm and were almost licking at the stinging cuts. I didn’t have an excuse. I had just cut indiscriminately. “But it had to have been more than once.” I continued. He looked at me slowly and sighed.
“I know it was more than once Bobby.” he said. He swallowed heavily and closed his eyes, leaning the back of his head against the sink. “It just started to pile up and then it sort of exploded.” Pause. He looked at me slowly, as if frightened that I would suddenly reject him. “I know it’s not my fault that you did it, but that’s all my mind would let me see.” His eyes went to the ceiling, as if the water damage could make things all better. I let everything go black as I shut my eyes. When I opened them he was staring at me worriedly, as if I would just kick him out for his weakness, but celebrate myself for mine. “I’ll leave if you want me to.”
Before I knew or thought anything different, I had slammed him to the floor and was desperately trying to equalize the pain that I felt in my heart with the pleasure that I got from showering kisses all over his face, feeling that he hadn’t really taken as much care shaving this week. Ignored the fact that his lips tasted of vodka because my arm reeked of blood.
“I don’t want you to go.” I whispered, burrowing my head in his chest. “You’re the only thing that keeps me sane.” He looked at me, shocked, for a moment, and then started to cry hysterically.
“How can you say that when you still cut yourself!” he said in between sobs. He had to have been drunk, he never cried like this when he was sober. These were the kind of tears that were the product of too much emotion and not enough thought. His whole body got involved in it, I had to hold his hands down so that he wouldn’t hurt himself.
“Jay, if you weren’t here, I would never have been able to see Gavin again...I would never have thought that I could love anyone after Shane.” Licked away his tears, trying to get him to calm down and think reasonably. He took deep gasping breaths and closed his eyes. “And it’s not like I’m totally blameless either...you still drink.” My guilt threatened to overwhelm me. I pushed it down, trying to go back to the pleasant nihilism that had filled my life before. I didn’t care, I didn’t care about anything, this was just a phase, the cutting was only to pretend to get some emotion, only to stop the pain that threatened to consume and rend flesh from bone. “Can we just try and stay sane until Gavin goes home on Friday?” I asked. He closed his eyes and took a moment before he answered.
“It’s in the closet.” he whispered. “Behind my suitcase.” I started to get up, but he grabbed my arm and forced me to look at him. I stopped and watched him silently, saw the fear rising in his eyes. “I don’t want to be like this forever.”
“I don’t think anyone does.”
The next two days went by relatively quickly in a haze of Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues and more boardgames than anyone over five should be forced to play. Toys were strewn about, much more than I thought we had bought for him. Maybe they all reproduced in the middle of the night, making little Happy Meal toys and bastardized Barbies from Legos and stuffed animals. They seemed to sprout from the seat cushions and reach for the lamps. Gavin ran through the fields of processed plastic and disappeared more often than I truly cared to admit.Jay and I were silent the whole week. We still slept together, starting the night out facing away from each other, a wall of denial between us. Ended up waking up in the morning curled up together, our legs and arms tangled, foreheads touching. We never said anything about it, it was assumed that that was inevitable. I was usually the one who woke up first, rejoicing in every second that I was able to spend next to him, even if we really weren’t talking and were living our lives in enforced silence in a small attempt to avoid stress. Yes, we’d talk to Gavin, hold small little conversations, but the larger issues were ignored and glossed over.
Food had no taste, water was the only drink that crossed my lips....I had found the vodka and given it to the cosmetologist next door, Jay had taken the scissors and hidden them so that I had to ask for them if I needed to cut anything. We both knew that there were ways that we could cheat, it wasn’t like there weren’t other sharp objects and Jay could just go out to a bar.
Trust was never something that I felt that I could take for granted.
“Hi Gavin! Did you have fun visiting Bobby?” Shane asked, hugging Gavin. He looked at me slowly, as if reverting to his former position of not knowing who I was. Did Shane’s touch have the power to erase memories and turn friend into indifferent foe? Jay’s hand slid into mine without much prompting.“It’s Daddy, Mommy. Not Bobby.” Gavin said. I closed my eyes and smiled inwardly.
“Okay...fine then. Why don’t you go and get into the car, okay? Terrence’ll get you all ready to go, okay?” He ran off, barely giving me a second glance. I hadn’t expected one anyway. Sometimes kids were oblivious. “I don’t know how you managed to do it, but it looks like you didn’t fuck him up this week. I’ll think about joint custody, okay? Terrence and I need some quality time once in a while.” she said. “That is, of course, if you can keep it up.” Then she turned and walked towards her car.
I watched them go, part of me wanting Gavin to stay with me forever, well, actually most of me yearned to have him stay and never go home with her and Terrence and forget about me...but a small piece of me knew that Jay and I needed to exorcize our demons before anyone else could be added to the mix.
A tear ran down my cheek. Jay kissed it away gently and then hugged me. I felt like a robot, nothing touched me anymore, if I was in the state that had preceded all of this I would have ran after the car and screamed my head off, then immediately gone back inside and slit my throat. Now all I wanted to do was hurt. Not die, just hurt. Jay wiped his eyes gently and walked back to the apartment building.
The only part of my body that I could even call warm was my arm, right over the three cuts. They were infected and the white blood cells underneath were dying by the hundreds...or thousands, just to keep me from suffering. My hand went to them and scratched, hoping that they would burst and give me a brief relief from the deadness.
I stared at the sky and wondered if the sun just pretended to be warm. Maybe it was only a huge ball of ice that faked living.