Between Two Minds: Awakening
Page 34
“Exactly! That’s why I’m so pissed, because it’s all I’ve ever known about my disability.”
“How did you find all of this out?”
“As crazy as it sounds, Charlie showed me.”
“What! The Charlie inside of you?”
“Yes. One of the first flashbacks I had with Charlie was of the job where he tried to quit working for the Padre. It ended in a high-speed chase where Charlie took his eyes off the road for just a second. He crashed into Mom’s car.”
Shock washed over Helen as she tried to process it all. “How in the hell?”
“I know. At first, I was in denial, thinking that our memories were blurring together. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more it makes sense.”
“But it is crazy. Why not just talk to your mom to clear it up before jumping to conclusions?”
“Imagine the one person you’ve trusted your whole life turns out to be the biggest liar you’ve ever known. No, I need proof, or she might try to keep the lie going.”
Suddenly, a light bulb went off in my head. Mom had always kept a storage room in the basement locked up, saying that she didn’t want me going in there. Since the stairs had no lift to get down there, I never thought twice about it. But that room would have been the safest place she could keep anything related to the accident without me knowing.
With my original fervor returning in full force, I threw the virtual reel across the room and bolted downstairs to the storage room. Discovering the cheap padlock standing between me and the truth, I scrambled to find something to deal with it. Across the room, there was a sizable, rusty plumber’s wrench on the workbench. I sprinted to pick it up, gripped the wrench tightly, and headed back to the padlock.
Clank!
But it only bent slightly.
“Dammit!” Panting hard, I gave it another strike.
Clank!
The padlock was holding on by a thread. Then a hand grabbed my shoulder, and I instinctively turned around ready to bludgeon someone over the head with the wrench.
“Ryan!”
Helen stumbled back in disbelief that I was prepared to strike her down.
Realizing my fanaticism and trying to catch my breath, I dropped the wrench, and the sound of it unevenly bouncing off the concrete floor rippled throughout the basement.
I felt to my knees, deflated. “I’m sorry, Helen. I wasn’t prepared to find out that my entire life has been one big lie after another.”
“Ryan, this is unacceptable. Until you talk to your mom, you’re just getting worked up! You’re going to hurt someone.”
Turning back to the storage room, I reached for the lock.
“Ryan!”
“What?”
“I bet this is the key. It was on a hook by the workbench.”
Still trying to catch my breath, I used the key on what was left of the lock, and it popped off the door. I reached for the handle, trying to prepare myself for what I would see, assuming it was going to be pretty bad.
“Ryan, sweetie!”
For the first time in my life, chills of rage covered my whole body when I heard the words that had been said to me thousands of time. Completely unable to feel any kind of affection for her, I needed Mom to know just how hurt I was and that I wouldn’t tolerate any more lies. I wanted to curse and yell and throw things at her because of how unfair it all felt. But instead, all I could do was turn around slowly as she continued to talk.
“Before you go into that room, let’s go for a walk.”
It was tough to maintain my anger when I finally made eye contact with her. Even if she lied about everything, she had always been there for me.
“But I need the truth, Mom.”
“That’s what I need to tell you.”
Helen, understanding the importance of the moment, headed upstairs. “I’ll go get your room cleaned up, Mrs. Carter.”
Outside, the day was as gloomy and cold as the conversation Mom and I were about to have. We made our way to the sidewalk and headed down the street.
Mom let out a big sigh. “I assume you know about the accident based on how the house looked.”
“I do.”
She nodded and gave me that mom-look, like she was about to tell me a story. “Before it happened, I was just a young soon-to-be mom, worried about everything that could go wrong with a natural pregnancy. Somewhat of a hypochondriac, I must have gone to the doctors at least ten times before I even got to the third trimester. The miracle of life was inside of me, and I didn’t want anything to ruin that.”
She cleared her throat. “Having never been in a car accident in my life, it seemed like a cruel twist of fate that the day I would go into labor was the same day it happened. I got into the car, focused entirely on my contractions, and the last thing I remembered was the loudest crashing noise before I blacked out. I woke up two days later, and the doctor told me what had happened. I had to be restrained in my hospital bed trying to get up to find you. To calm me down, they assured me that the operation on your spine was successful and that you were stable in recovery. But I didn’t truly believe them until I saw you in the NICU.”
She paused for a moment. “Staring at you, so little and innocent, lacking the words to describe just how unfair everything was to you, I made a decision at that moment. We were going to move on. I refused to let the events before your birth hold me…hold us back.”
As bad as it all was for her, I couldn’t just accept her side of the story. “But you didn’t just withhold information. You created a whole series of half-truths to support the one big lie that you told me when I was younger. Now, I have no idea if anything you have ever told me is true, Mom.”
We continued walking down the street until we reached an intersection where Mom made us turn right onto a side road.
“You’re right. What made it easier was that an anonymous donor paid for all our medical expenses, and after the initial reports in the newspapers, the local media outlets stopped reporting on it. I guess when I decided to look forward, I also completely blocked out the past. Lies were easier to believe than the truth. I came up with a story that made no one at fault for your situation—a simple genetic mishap.”
“But you went to great lengths to make that lie seem as real as possible! I remember asking about it so many times.”
“Yes, you were a curious child, so I had to fill in the blanks for it all to make sense. As you got older, I debated telling you what really happened countless times. But once you got Auto, you became less interested in the past and more interested in exploring the world. Part of me thought it was all finally behind us. That feeling got even stronger when you became dead set on your mind migration. Without knowing it, you were determined to overcome the last major fallout from the accident. As much as I said I was against it because I didn’t want to lose you, I was also secretly really proud of you for going through with it because it meant I could move on.”
Stopping at a corner for the signal to cross, several bullet-busses sped by, blowing our hair and clothes about. Once we received our walking cue, we crossed.
“But, Mom, that’s bullshit!”
“Language! I’m still your mother.”
“Sorry. It’s just not fair because you got to move on while I was living a lie.”
“Again, you’re right. That’s why I wanted to tell—show—you everything before I apologized. Let’s keep walking. It’s just up ahead now.”
We approached an expanse of open land with high fences surrounding it. I looked up at the sign above the archway and read aloud, “Northwest Cemetery.” Peering down and across the expanse beyond the fences, I finally noticed all of the headstones and other sullen landmarks.
Winding a half kilometer into the graveyard, Mom finally stopped us at a very particular plot. “Here it is.” She pointed down to one of the dirtier headstones.
“I didn’t want you to see his pictures before I told you. The day you became paralyzed inside of me was the same day I lost my first true love.”
My whole world was being turned upside down, and it was hard to bear. With my mind spinning, I tried to piece it all together.
“Wait. So then, Dad—who was Jim?”
“I met Jim about a year after you were born. Having a paralyzed one-year-old and struggling with postpartum depression, PTSD, and a whole slew of other mental illnesses, I was surprised that anyone would want to be around me, much less fall in love with me. But Jim did. He did, and he also cared deeply for you.”
“Then why did he leave us when I was six?”
Tears began to stream down both of our faces as she furthered the story.
“That’s actually why we split up. Jim was an amazing father figure. He made it clear that he thought it wasn’t fair to you, growing up thinking that he was your father. But even after six years, I was still really messed up from everything. Clinging to the lie, I told him if he didn’t agree with my decisions that he could leave. I didn’t think he would, but he did.”
As Mom’s crying intensified, a cold drizzle began to fall on us.
Still no words came to mind to accurately describe how I was feeling as we stood staring down at my father’s headstone.
My disability.
My father.
Jim.
After standing silently in the frigid rain for what felt like several minutes, Mom finally asked the obvious question. “How did you figure it all out?”
The words froze me in my mental tracks. How in the hell am I supposed to tell her about Charlie?
While I was far along in coming to terms with my situation post-migration, it would be wild trying to explain it to Mom. I could try to explain the dreams I had during the mind migration—my earliest memories of Charlie. Or maybe it would have been better to start from the point where Charlie and I officially met—around the time of the Cameron Walsh speech. Going over the different ways to tell her, attempting to verbalize it to her of all people just sounded so crazy. I quickly found myself becoming humbled the more I thought about it, and it wasn’t long before I came to the exact same conclusion that she did all of those years ago. As hypocritical as it made me, I couldn’t utter the full truth to her in that moment, and I also wasn’t justified in staying angry at her.
“There was an old news clipping I came across, then I saw the picture of the green car by the front door. Combined with some of my earliest memories of X-rays, it made sense that my spine was never deformed but severed.”
She nodded through her tears. “I am truly sorry, Ryan. It shames me having lied to you for so long. I know you’ll always question the things I tell you from now on, and rightfully so. But I swear to you that you now know the whole truth.”
“I think I get it, Mom. It’ll take me some time to fully grasp everything from today, but you were put through a lot at a time when you should have been focusing on giving birth and taking care of us. You’re still my mother, and I still love you.”
Leaning in, I gave her the tightest hug, and we just held each other for a few minutes as the rain picked up.
“I still want you to see the room downstairs. As strange as it sounds, I made the room so that I would never forget, and I would go in there from time to time to remind myself what we’d been through.”
We made our way back to the house where we found Helen anxiously wondering if we had made amends.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Shut it, Ryan. Are you two okay?”
“We’re good, and you were basically right!”
“Yes! I knew it! Wait. What was I right about?”
“I didn’t know the whole story. We can talk more about it later. Were you able to clean up my mess?”
“Her room looks good as new.”
“Thanks. If you don’t mind, I’m going to spend some time downstairs with my mom. I’ll call you later.”
“Sounds good. See ya, Ry.”
“See ya.”
Mom and I headed for the basement, and she let me open the door to the room. Stale air filled my nose as we entered together, and she flipped the light switch.
I turned slowly around in a circle twice to take it all in. The room was laid out like the old-fashioned crime labs I had seen in those cop shows. Photos, newspaper clippings, printouts, and drawings were all organized across the walls, and near the far edge of the room was a large rectangular table that had books and other papers on it. The entire left side of the room was dedicated to my real father.
Looking at the pictures, I could definitely see the resemblance. He had been a tall man, and it was obvious that he’d worked with his hands. Near the end of the wall, there were pictures that had to have been taken weeks and days before the accident. Some were from what had to be my baby shower, and it put a knot in my throat, making me want to break down in tears again. My mom and dad looked so happy together in every picture. The very last photo forced a question to fall out of my mouth.
“Is this from…?”
“The day of the accident? Yes. That’s me when my contractions started. I told your father we should wait at home as long as possible, but he was so worried that he insisted we get in the car and head to the hospital as soon as we could. That was part of the problem. I thought that, had I just tried a little harder to convince him, we’d all be a family to this day.”
“Mom, you can’t blame yourself for the unknown. You were in labor. That’s enough.”
“I’ve told that to myself thousands of times. But it doesn’t make it any easier to accept.”
I turned to the back wall with the table and began looking at the pieces of old newspaper. The headlines unveiled the story that I had come to know that day.
PREGNANT COUPLE TARGETED WITH MANUAL CAR; SUSPECT IN CUSTODY.
UPDATE ON TARGETED, PREGNANT COUPLE: MAN DIES; PREGNANT WOMAN SURVIVES, MINOR INJURIES; NEWBORN SURVIVES, IN SERIOUS CONDITION.
TARGETED WOMAN, STACY CARTER, AND BABY LEAVE HOSPITAL, SAYS: “I JUST WANT TO GET ON WITH MY LIFE.”
Next, there were hand drawings and some notes scribbled onto what looked like journal paper.
“What are these?”
Mom took a step toward them and nodded. “From the trial of the man who crashed into our car. As much as I wanted to just move on, I had to go to the trial to make sure he wasn’t able to do to others what he had done to us.”
“Did you know much about him?”
She didn’t answer right away, but instead reached for something under one of the books on the table. I was overcome by confusion at what she revealed. “This is the only picture I have of him.”
It was like looking in the strangest mirror seeing his face in real life, and I couldn’t help but wonder.
“Did you ever meet him? Or talk to him?”
“Yes. Charles Rios was his name. He was a deeply disturbed man.”
“What do you mean?”
“He pled not guilty to crimes that he obviously committed. When he took the stand, he hid behind the Fifth Amendment for most of the questions. When he finally did answer questions, he was short, vague, and not helpful. It seemed like he had given up all hope.”
“Oh?”
“He was a veteran, and must have gotten really messed up when he served overseas.”
“Sure.”
“I almost felt a little sorry for him until…”
“Until what?”
“Never mind.”
“Mom. You said you weren’t hide anything from me anymore.”
“It’s not that. It’s just…it was a horrible thing. It’s hard for me to even think about, much less
show to my son whom was deeply affected by it. But I did say that I would tell you everything moving forward, and I meant it.”
She reached into her pocket, obtained yet another key, and approached the table. There was a locked drawer off to the right. With a couple of clicks, it was unlocked, and she pulled it out. With a trembling hand, she reached inside and obtained a single piece of laminated paper.
Dear Stacey Carter,
Words will never be able to convey just how sorry I am. Failing to kill you all is one of the biggest regrets of my life, and it was worth trying even if I ended up rotting in a cell. As far as people go, you’re as low as they come. It only makes sense that I would have these thoughts, and the more I know about you, the more I know they’re valid.
You may be looking for some kind of explanation for why it all happened. I could go into the details about how you’re antiwar and antitroops. But it’s a tired story that you will try to deny. I could bring up all the freedoms I protected while serving in Pakistan where I saw countless bodies of people I knew. Though you’d still try to excuse what you have done.
I just wanted to make someone pay for the criminal behavior of the so-called protesters. I knew you were a part of it. I knew that you played a vital role in the whole movement, and I wanted you and everyone else to pay.
In a twisted way, it’s fitting that you finally paid the price on the day you were going to bring another ungrateful mouth into this world. However, it shames me more than anything that I only killed one of you. If I could do it all over, I would have driven faster.
In closing, I want to let you know that I have tortured myself enough these last few months knowing I let you survive. I refuse to live and let the kangaroo court convict me against the justice that I sought. By the time you read this letter, I will have ended it all in disgrace, and I hope that you never get the fake justice you preach about to your friends.
See you in hell,
Charles Rios
My blood boiled reading the real letter that Charlie had sent to my mother. He had been lying to me all along. He was the one who ruined all of our lives, and it was time that I settled things with him once and for all.