Livia Stone, Parental Heartbreaker.
“Hey,” I say as my steps sound like loud, giant footsteps against the hardwood floor.
Tracy is on the couch, sitting next to the end table. My dad is on the easy chair, stretched out, legs crossed, shoes on the coffee table, like he has been here for the last three years. Like Tracy didn’t fall to pieces every morning after Dad disappeared while Jasper and I were left with the wake of his destruction.
“Your shoes aren’t supposed to be on the furniture,” I tell him.
“I’ll pass out the rules, Livia”—Tracy’s tone is curt—“which, by the way, you’ve broken several.” She’s trying to stay sane. Trying not to explode. “I…” She pauses and toys with her nail, distracting herself or trying to find the right words.
But I know how this line goes. I expect this from your brother but not from you.
What did Dr. Elizabeth say about this?
Breathe. Don’t react. Think. Wait. Sleep on it.
But then again, I’ve always been mild about my reactions. Not a hothead. Jasper and I were very different in that way. Similar in a lot of ways, ones that Mom liked better in Jasper than she did me.
“Your favorite twin died, Mom. I’m not him. But I’m holding up to his roles in the family. Staying out late. Forgetting my cell phone.”
“Apologize to your mother, Livia.” My father’s voice has always been enduring but not now. Now, it’s diplomatic, and he never calls me Livia. “Do you have any idea how much worry you caused us, Liv?”
He leans forward from his chair. Our chair. Not his. The soft light makes him look younger. Like the years of alcoholism haven’t eaten away his youthfulness.
“Oh, now, you’re here to play ‘Dad’?” I use air quotes with my fingers, the ones Jasper used to hate.
“Listen”—he points at me—“I’ll take every last ounce of what I deserve. I know what I did, Livia. And I’m not proud of it. And I can’t promise that, two weeks from now, it won’t be different. All you and I have is the present moment. Today. Now, you can hate me all you want, which I expect, but that doesn’t give you any right to disrespect your mother or her rules. Keep your damn phone on you. Answer her when she texts you.” He pauses. His eyeballs seem to grow in the orange light, but I know it’s the tears building up. My dad coughs once, leaving his fist in front of his mouth. “We don’t want to lose another child, Liv.” His voice quivers.
Jasper was so much better at making off-the-cuff, convincing arguments. Not me. I have to think about it. I sit on the idea for days before I can articulate my thoughts and put them into a statement that makes sense. Where the validity isn’t questionable.
But I have to get one last dig in. Who knows why I need to. And the regret begins before I say it, but I can’t not say it. “You lost me a long time ago,” I whisper and drag my feet upstairs to my room.
I take three pills and use the water on my nightstand. My heart is pumping so fast, and my ears are swimming. I find no solace in the last dig I threw at my dad. I feel lost. Alone. Afraid. The hollowness I have inside me is the dead tree bark, blackened grief shriveling away into nothingness.
Poppy: “Those pills aren’t going to help you, Liv.”
I wince, trying to make Poppy’s words disappear from my head. “Leave me alone, Poppy.” I just need something. I just need relief. “I’m tired.”
Staring at the bottle of pills labeled Valium, I hold the bottle in my hand.
Take one every three hours as needed.
My heart is whooshing.
My head is pulsating.
And my feelings are eating me alive.
I open the bottle and take another pill for good measure.
Turning off the light in my room, the darkness greeting my needs, I pull my knees up to my chest and let the tears silently meet my pillow. And I wait for the medicine to take effect while I think of Daniel and forget the heartbreak.
Fuck you, Jasper, for leaving.
I saw the word
Written on his back window in dirt.
Fag.
I rushed to erase it,
But he was behind me.
He saw it.
Later, when the night settled in,
I reached his room, pushed the door open.
“Want to talk?”
“No.”
“Can I sit?”
“Free country.”
I walk in.
We sit,
In silence,
And let the world rage around us.
A bright orb from last night enters my mind, making my eyelids turn a bright red from the inside.
The melancholy of what I did the night before—four pills, no longer one, two, three…now, four—extends out of my brain and washes over my already predicted shitty day.
Why did I do that? I shouldn’t have done that.
I grab the pill bottle and check the damage I have left.
Four.
Right now, I want to dump them down the toilet, so I won’t make the same mistake again. Then, the guilt quiets down very quickly, but somewhere in the same brain, in the front part, my conscious mind thinks better of it.
Keep them, it says. You’ll need them, and you know it.
I look at my phone—11:02 a.m.
“Crap!” I jump out of bed. I haven’t slept this late or for this long for a month. “I’m late.”
I spring into the shower that connects Jasper’s bedroom and mine, and it’s so automatic.
I wait for his music to start.
It doesn’t.
But this thought doesn’t completely fill me with loneliness, as it did just yesterday. It’s a little softer this time. A tiny bit softer, and I’m not sure if it’s the pills or the world.
As I let the hot water run on my face, there’s a knock on the bathroom door. My head though is still a bit fuzzy from last night.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me,” Tracy says. “Can we talk when you get out?”
“Yeah. But I have to get to school.”
There’s a long silence.
“Well, unless Belle’s Hollow High has started school on Sundays, I’d say you have another day off.”
I take a huge breath. Relief. Instant reprieve that I don’t have school and that I don’t have to face anyone today if I don’t want to.
Not Mr. Joe.
Not Simon.
Not Whitney.
I don’t have to face life.
Tracy is sitting on my bed when I walk out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around me, my wet hair in fat chunks down my back.
“Hey,” I say. “I’m sorry,” comes out of my mouth.
Maybe it’s the full night of sleep, plus some, or the pills I took last night. Either way, I feel good.
I sit down next to her.
“Me, too.”
There’s an awkward silence between us. Two strangers, related by blood, have spent the last seventeen years with useless words to fill silence. Now though, words have run out. The encounters from here on out have to count. They have to count, or we won’t make it.
“Liv, we need to talk.” Her words are shaky, her serious nurse face.
“I know.” I reach up and attempt to run my fingers through my wet hair, a fruitless effort, yet I’m trying to divert my attention or hers. I’m not sure.
Tracy’s eyes are on her hands. “What do you think about cleaning out Jasper’s room?” After each word, a break and a breath.
“No,” comes out too fast. I’m unprepared, and I want to take it back, or add further explanation. “I’m not ready.” I pause. “Are you?”
“I don’t know.”
My throat feels dry, and the hair on my back causes a cold chill to run up my spine.
“Let’s have lunch today, just me and you. Las Cazuela’s?”
This makes me think about the bacon sarnie that Daniel made me last night. I nod at another futile attempt at quality time with Tracy.
Quiet nods.
Awkward words.
Check, please.
Tracy gently places her hand on mine. “Jasper wasn’t my favorite twin, Liv. Just so you know. I have a harder time communicating with you than I did with him, I guess.”
I don’t say anything.
“Your AP class. I just wish you had talked to me about it before you did it.”
Silence on my end.
When could I have talked to you about it? When you’re working at night? When you’re crying in the shower? When you’re grieving my dead brother?
“Are you and Dad getting back together?” My stomach twists in a knot at the thought, between the anger and the hurt.
Tracy’s hand tightens around mine. “No.”
“So, he’s really here to help with me? And that’s it?”
Tracy searches my room, maybe looking for her own unprepared answers. “Remember when you guys were twelve, and you and your dad would go down to the library and come home with a stack of books? You’d spend the time reading each book and analyzing what worked and what didn’t work about the story. And there was joy on your face when you and your dad connected on a point.” She smiles through the tears that have formed in the corners of her eyes.
Before Dad’s drinking became a problem.
Before Dad hit Jasper.
Before Dad left.
The Before Dad.
“As much as you don’t want to hear it, Liv, he’s here for you and only you. He’s here to help with your broken heart. Just like when he read Old Yeller to you. Remember? Oh, you were so sad when the dog died.”
I wish, this time, it were that easy. That my dad could say a few dad words, rub my forehead, and give me a glass of chocolate milk, so everything would seem to find its place again in my complicated universe.
“I know your world isn’t the same as when you were twelve. I know this hurt is far different than anything we’ve ever experienced.”
“I want him back, Mom.” My bottom lip begins to quiver. “Some days—” I choke up. “Some days don’t feel real. Like I’m just waiting for him to come through the door, and he doesn’t.”
Tracy pulls me to her chest. “I know, baby. I know. Me, too.”
Tracy finds my ear with her lips. Through her touch, I know she’d rather heal my heart than her own. We’ve had this inexplicable communicational divide for most of my life, but I know, in this moment, she wants my world to be right. And the truth of the matter is, she can’t fix it. Nobody can.
There’s a long pause where the outside world freezes, and then finally she speaks, “How are your meetings going with Dr. Elizabeth?”
“Fine,” I whisper a lie. As if there’s peace of mind, comfort in lying. An unethical deed I keep allowing to happen, and I can’t explain why.
Like facing the truth, the consequences, is too much to deal with. Before Jasper’s death, I wasn’t a liar. I also wasn’t a whore.
Now, I’m both.
“Good,” Tracy says.
Tracy leaves a few minutes later with my word on lunch. We’ll eat. Make small talk and awkward body movements to distract us from the gaping hole that separates us.
Tracy and Jasper are more alike, in my opinion. Easygoing. A free spirit to an extent. A natural leader because of their wit and charm. Both Jasper and Tracy had a way of speaking off-the-cuff, using philosophical points that drew others together. They were the gray. They could do the gray.
I’m different. Black and white. I need time to think on things before I speak. Preparation. Type A personality.
Jasper and Tracy just had an unspoken bond that I couldn’t fit into. But my dad—the dysfunctional one, the alcoholic, a lawyer—I can relate to him. His job is to prepare arguments overnight, strategize, be methodical, analytical. We are the same, the exact same.
I take the towel from my body and stand in front of the mirror. The imperfect body, the one without any bumps. But I see someone looking back at me, someone whose lack of sleep is reflected just beneath her eyes. Her deep blue eyes have changed to gray. And the gauntness in her cheeks reflects the sadness in her heart.
Though I see her reflection—remnants of me in her eyes, her hands, her thighs—it’s only emptiness that fills her bones, her body. Where there was once a passion for life, for success, it is now clouded with the reflection of someone she doesn’t know.
Who is this girl?
This sad girl staring back.
Has too much time passed for her to see her twin brother through her eyes? That was where people said we looked most alike. The eyes and the smile.
A void fills my insides as my memory replaces the girl’s face with Jasper’s. I know this is my imagination, my desperate, vain attempt to see where the world went wrong. Took the wrong person. Surely, there was a miscalculation. Somewhere in the universe, God got it wrong.
My phone chimes, bringing my attention away from the reflection of the girl who’s somehow supposed to be me, from my nightstand where it puts off a tune next to the bottle of pills that alleviated my broken heart last night. Made me unfeel any sadness and allowed me to drift off to sleep. The guilt begins to retreat.
It’s a text from Cao.
Cao: My mother is the devil in comfortable shoes. I think she thinks I feel more Chinese now than before we left. I don’t. Don’t tell her. I figure this is my only way out alive.
Me: LOL. When are you coming home?
Cao: Driving now. See you tomorrow morning for school? U OK?
She’s always asking if I’m okay. I’m not, but I text her a thumbs-up.
Cao: You’re lying. But whatever. You never use emojis. Just FYI. Not sure if you’ve noticed that or not. Call you when I get home.
I’ve used emojis before.
Me: I do too use emojis. Remember that one time I sent you the middle finger?
Cao: OK. The fact that you had to say “remember the time…” ;) See? You don’t use them.
Me: Drive safe.
I go back to my text messages and notice several text messages from Simon, and my stomach doubles over and not in a good way. How can a boy I hold good childhood memories with give off a merciless feeling of uneasiness, of loss?
Just past my phone, the pill bottle beckons me with its metaphorical claws that wrap around my shoulders and whispers, Just two. Two will make you feel better. Your brother just died. You need this, Livia. You need some relief.
What did the prescription say? Just one every four hours? Four every hour? Does it matter?
I reach for the bottle of pills and fight through the resistance my body gives off.
The guilt has retreated all the way back to my mind.
A conversation with myself and the bottle of pills.
Me: Remember what alcohol did to my dad?
The bottle: That’s different. I’m not alcohol. Besides, you were prescribed me. Come on, your brother died.
Me: I’m bound to make worse decisions when I ingest you.
The bottle: It will help you not feel.
Me: I need not to feel.
The bottle: Come on, you deserve me. It will help at lunch with your mom. Remember? Awkward conversation. Body jerks. That whole bit. You’re welcome.
And that’s all it takes because I remove the last four pills from the bottle and quickly swallow them without water.
I sit on the side of the bed and wait for them to take effect.
And, when they do, it’s glorious. It doesn’t take long.
I remember Dr. Elizabeth telling Tracy, “They’re rapid release. New on the market. These will help.”
I feel better. I feel stronger. I feel as though I don’t care what people think of me; in fact, they’re pretty lucky to be in my presence.
Yeah.
This.
Is.
It.
I have arrived.
I’m relaxed, and there’s this squishy—not sure that’s a word I’d use normally—feeling that surrounds me like a bubble. A protective pink bubble that remin
ds me of how important I am.
“Poppy?” I whisper. “Are you there?”
Still, nothing.
Is this what Poppy feels like?
I look back to my phone and click on the text messages that Simon sent me.
I watch as my fingers glide across the screen, as if they don’t belong to me. As if they’re someone else’s fingers. Thin, long, and lean and just like Jasper’s. And the mention of his name doesn’t hurt as bad this time.
See? the bottle of pills whispers from my nightstand. You feel alive.
Message 1 from Simon yesterday at 4:42 p.m.: Liv. Where are u? @ Hawthorne Hill. Waiting 4 u.
Crap. But it doesn’t take long for me to forget about it.
I’m just a person trying to heal my wounds, I tell myself.
Message 2 from Simon: Livia. Call me. Whitney is freaking out.
Message 3 from Simon: Livia. Seriously. She’s freaking out.
Missed call from Simon at 1:42 a.m.
Message 4 from Simon: Liv. Shit. IDK where she’s at, but she’s gone nuts.
Message 5 from Simon: She scrolled thru my text messages 2 you.
Lunch with Tracy Earlier Today
“Livia, are you all right?”
“Just tired, Mom.”
“Did you not sleep well last night?”
“No.”
Awkward conversation.
Awkward conversation.
Awkward conversation.
Lunch over.
Monday morning calls too quickly and piles on my shoulders like a bad dream when I come to the quick—and sad—realization that I have no more pills to take. No buffer. No protection against my feelings. It feels as though there’s a snow cloud in the middle of my brain that sits and waits for me to try to think again.
I turn the alarm off on my phone and drag myself into the shower. It’s six forty-five a.m.
I wait for Jasper. His music. His, What are you staring at, Liv?
But I’m met with darkness on the other side of the door.
The snow cloud separates, and my mind slowly becomes clearer.
Standing Sideways Page 13