To Love A Friend

by Jana David

Allie

  It was four in the morning, when my phone rang. I had it in my hand even before I was fully awake. My home number flashed on the screen, and a wave of dread overcame me. Something was wrong.

  “Hello?” I answered, afraid of who would be on the other end.

  “Darling, you need to call the police.”

  I tensed, alarmed but at the same time unsure.

  “Hey, mum, what's going on?”

  “There is someone outside. I need the police here right now.” I could hear weird noises in the background. I was hoping it was just the TV.

  “Where's dad?”I asked, but she was already talking over me, not even listening to what I was saying.

  “I saw someone sneaking around our garden earlier”, she said. Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and it was hard to understand her over the background noise.

  I had learned long ago that it was best to go along with the stories my mother was making up. If you told her it was all in her head, she would often get defensive, mad or even violent, so I said, “You did? When was that?” I didn't think she was in any real danger, but of course there was always the possibility that she hadn't just imagined the whole thing.

  “The police, Allie. I couldn't get through to them. I need you to call them for me. Please.”

  “Yes, mum, I will. But I need your help, too. Can you find dad and put him on the phone for me, please?”

  “What?”

  “I need to speak to dad”, I calmly repeated.

  “I don't...what? No, he isn't here. Why would he be here?”

  I was beginning to slightly panic. I wanted to call my dad, but I also didn't want to hang up on my mother. I wished I had stayed at Ian's place tonight. I could have asked him to call my father and make sure he could help mum.

  Sometimes she wandered around the house at night and he didn't wake up. At least I knew she was at home, since she was calling from the house phone.

  “Mum, I really need to speak to dad. Can you put him on the phone for me, please?” I tried to keep my voice even.

  “I already told you, he isn't here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I'm sure.” She was beginning to sound agitated.

  “It's alright, I'm sorry, I hurried to say. “So, where are you right now?”

  I remembered the first time I was aware that my mother was different from other mums.

  I was at a birthday party of one of the girls from my play group. I must have been about four years old. My father had to work, so a friend of the family, who also had a daughter my age, drove me there.

  At the party, I remembered seeing all these mother's with their children, playing with us, interacting with us, and I remembered wondering why my mother hadn't come with me. I couldn't understand it at the time, but it hurt all the same.

  Growing up, there had always been times when my mother had simply disappeared.

  My dad always explained that mum had been taken ill and needed care at a hospital. I thought nothing much of it. The hospital was the place where sick people went to get better, and my mother always came back from these trips looking more healthy. But deep down I knew it wasn't normal. No other child I knew had a mother who went to the hospital as often as mine did.

  And it wasn't just the constant hospital visits. There were times when I was scared, even though my father tried to shelter me from what was really going on as best as he could. Those times were when the police would knock on our door in the middle of the night. My father would get up, let them in, talk to them, and then he would call a neighbour or a family friend to come over and stay with me while he went with the police officers. Sometimes he wouldn't return until the early hours of the morning. I never slept during those nights.

  When he returned, my mother in tow, I always knew we were in for a rough couple of weeks, because from those trips, my mother always came back looking a hundred times worse.

  I knew to stay clear of her then, but that wasn't always possible.

  My dad took care of her. He made sure she took her medication, took care of doctors appointments, on top of managing basic household matters and going to work full time.

  Over the years, I went from resenting my father for always putting my mother's needs first, to respecting him for what he did.

  He loved mum very much, there was no doubt about it. Even when she screamed at him, told him she hated him, he loved her.

  He could have walked out on her countless times, taken me with him and our lives would have been a whole lot easier.

  As ashamed as I am to admit it, sometimes I wished he would actually do it. I imagined a life where it was just the two of us, living in a small house, without the screaming, without the drama, without the episodes of complete craziness.

  I was proud of him for being the strong one in the family, though, for keeping us together and not giving up on my mother.

  His love for her was so selfless and pure, I couldn't even begin to hope I would ever experience anything like it in my lifetime.

  My mother was still talking, jumping from one topic to the next, making it hard for me to follow. I briefly considered knocking on Jessica's door and asking for her phone so that I could call my dad, but there would be questions. Questions I didn't want to answer.

  I figured, as long as she was on the phone with me, she wouldn't be able to do anything too crazy.

  Where in the world was my father?

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, I heard a deep, gruff voice in the background on my mother's end. Seconds later, my father took the phone from her. I breathed out a huge sigh of relief.

  “Go back to bed, sweetheart”, was all he said. “I'll take care of your mum.”

  I hung up the phone, but there was no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep. I sat on my bed for a while, holding the phone in my hand. These phone calls always left me shaken up. It was worse now, though, as I was hundreds of miles away and couldn't just go home to make sure everything was alright.

  I knew what I needed. I called Ian.

  He answered the phone with a raspy voice, but I could hear the worry in his tone.

  “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

  Yes, everything was wrong, but just hearing his voice made me feel better.

  “I'm just...” Suddenly I didn't know what to say. “Sorry to call you so late. Or early, actually. I just...”

  “Allie, what's wrong?” He was fully awake now, his voice laced with tension.

  When I didn't answer, he said, “I'm coming over right now, okay? Give me twenty minutes.”

  “No, don't. I just needed … My mother called.”

  “What? What happened? Is she alright?”

  “Yes, everything is fine. My father is taking care of it. I shouldn't have called you. It was nothing, really. Sorry I woke you up.” I suddenly felt stupid for overreacting like this.

  “Never apologise for that. I'm still coming, though. Call you when I get there.”

  Before I could utter another word of protest, the line disconnected.

  Almost exactly twenty minutes later, I got a text from Ian saying he was waiting outside. I couldn't believe he'd actually done this, just come over in the middle of the night, because I was having a stupid case of mental breakdown.

  It was freezing cold outside and I remembered that today was the first of December. The months had just flown by.

  I met him outside my building, wearing sweatpants and a shirt that said 'Sleep is my drug of choice'. I didn't even want to know what the rest of me looked like.

  Ian pulled me in for a hug as soon as I reached him. He didn't say a word. He just held me and I lost it. This always happened in Ian's arms. His touch melted away all the walls I so carefully built around me.

  Ian easily picked me up and carried me over to his car, where he sat with me in the passenger seat, just holding me.

  I don't know how long we sat there. The heater was running full force and I just spilled my heart out to
him.

  In the early hours of the morning, he drove us back to his place, where we both fell into bed and fell asleep immediately.

  Later that morning, I woke up feeling a hundred times better. The events of the night before didn't seem quite so dramatic after getting some much-needed sleep. Light came through the window, but it was strangely muted this morning. Cloudy, I thought at first, but then I took a closer look.

  It was snowing. Actual snowflakes came down from the sky. I couldn't believe it.

  “It's snowing!” I screamed way too loud. I was already up and had the window open, when Ian began to stir.

  “What?” he sleepily asked.

  “I said, it's snowing!”

  “And?”

  “And isn't that the most amazing thing you've ever seen?” I looked over at him, and he was still lying there with his eyes closed.

  “You'd have to open your eyes, of course, if you wanted to see what was happening out in the world.”

  He opened one eye, squinting at me like a pirate. “Not to dampen your spirits here, but this isn't the first time I've seen snow.”

  “Maybe not, but it's the first snow of the year. That's always special.”

  “If you say so. All I can think when I see it, is that already another season of slick roads and annoying driveway-shovelling is starting. Now would you please come back to bed? It's cold in here without you.”

  I crawled back under the covers and wrapped my cold legs around Ian's, just to tease him a little.

  “I'll help you with the shovelling”, I offered.

  “Thanks”, he dryly replied.

  I reached over and kissed the tip of his nose. “You're welcome. You know what else you need now?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “You need a Christmas tree.”

  Ian groaned, burying his face in his pillow. “None of us will even be here for Christmas. It's a waste of money.”

  “What about before Christmas? Like, all the rest of December? The month just started”, I said.

  “We can get one of those plastic trees, if you absolutely insist”, he replied.

  “But they don't smell all nice and tree-like”, I pouted.

  He looked up at me and rolled his eyes.

  “If I remember correctly, you used to be the king of Christmas trees.”

  That got a smile out of him.

  “Yeah, when we were around ten, and I still believed in Father Christmas.”

  “Come on, please...All I can do to decorate my room is to put up twinkly lights. I want a tree.” I made a sad face at him. I guessed it turned out pretty good, because he caved.

  “Okay, fine. We'll go Christmas tree shopping.”

  I smiled and gave him another kiss. This one on the lips.

  “Can we go tomorrow?”

  So the next day, Ian and I went on a little road trip to the local Christmas tree farm after school.

  I remembered all the times when his parents had taken the three of us with them to go shopping for trees.

  They were fun-filled days with loads of hot chocolate, feeding reindeer and, of course, picking out Christmas trees.

  At home, it was usually my dad who just picked up a tree after work a week or two before Christmas, and then we'd decorate it together.

  But in the Curtis family, getting a Christmas tree was a whole experience in itself. Darcy and I always loved to tag along, and for Ian the trip was often the most important ritual related to Christmas. He got really into the whole 'finding the perfect tree' thing. And I mean he got really into it.

  He always brought a tape measure to find the one with the perfect height. And the branches had to be perfect, evenly spaced and full and bushy.

  Darcy and I loved to tease him about it relentlessly, but we had to admit, Ian did always find the most beautiful tree in the lot.

  It was just as much fun as I remembered, even as an adult. Ian and I laughed so much, my stomach hurt and my cheeks were sore from smiling. I had forgotten all about the day before. But as we drank hot chocolate and trudged through lines of trees, there was something else that was bothering me. I couldn't help but feel as if something was missing. If I was being honest, it was more like someone was missing. Lately, whenever Ian and I did something together and it was just the two of us, it just didn't feel right.

  I'd gotten used to having Darcy around again, and missed him whenever he wasn't there.

  We went through pretty much every single tree in the entire field, but after hours of searching, thanks to Ian's excessive perfectionism, we finally settled on the perfect one. I had to admit, all the searching had been worth it. It was a beautiful tree.

  After becoming the proud owners of our little green friend, however, Ian pointed out a vital flaw in our plan.

  “How are we going to get it home now, though. It's way too big to fit inside the car.”

  Well...I hadn't planned for that.

  So we strapped the tree to the roof with string given to us by one of the workers, and I simply prayed it would stay there and not fall off somewhere halfway home.

  We also made a quick pit stop at Tesco to get some lights, ornaments and other Christmas tree essentials, since the boys didn't have any at home.

  When we got back, Darcy and Sam were sitting in the living room, watching TV. Their faces, when they saw us walk in with two large shopping bags and a tree, were priceless.

  “Oh no, you didn't!” Sam exclaimed, coming over to help Ian carry the tree through the door.

  “You actually bought a real tree!” Darcy came over, too, and the first thing he did was stick his nose into the branches and take a deep breath. “Smells amazing”, he concluded.

  “I know, right?” I said. I was practically bouncing on the spot. I couldn't wait to put it up.

  “And you bought decorations as well!” Darcy took the bag with ornaments from my hand, and proceeded to take everything out of the boxes.

  Sam and Ian were still holding the tree, waiting for the tree stand to be set up.

  “Hey, a little help here”,I called over as I unpacked the box. I had no idea how this thing was supposed to work.

  Darcy abandoned the ornaments. “Step aside, Princess. Let a man handle that.” His tone was mocking, but I happily did as he asked. I didn't want it to be my fault if the tree fell over one of these days.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ian narrow his eyes at his friend, and I realised this must have been the first time Ian had heard Darcy call me Princess. It had never been an issue before, but now it seemed he wasn't too happy sharing his nickname for me with Darcy.