Author's Note:
Oneshot!
Into Roger's past to tell the story of his mother.
Review?
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When I was six, my mother gave me my first acoustic guitar.
And she used to sit beside me and teach me chords.
And when she'd go to sleep at night, I'd sit up in my room beneath the window and play till my fingers bled.
I would play beneath the slivers of moonlight that fell on my bed.
Just so that the next morning, I could watch the way her eyes lit up.
Like the entire world was inside her.
The first time she saw the blood stains on the guitar, her face went white.
And then when I told her why, she just pulled me close enough so that I could hear her heartbeat.
And told me I never needed to try to impress her, that she would love me through every hour.
I still hear her heartbeat sometimes.
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When I was eight, my mother gave me my first electric guitar.
She also gave me my first scar.
And although I deserved it, nothing in the world had ever ripped through me like that.
All I can remember is my face being on fire, my jaw dropping in utter shock – someplace beyond tears – and the way my mother's eyes fell dark.
I ran to my room and picked up my guitar.
Later that night, when she heard the chords she taught me sounding through the heavy door, she came into my room and stepped through those slivers of moonlight to hold me.
"I love you, Roger."
I could still hear her heartbeat, over my sobs.
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When I was ten, my mother gave me my first hate.
It was in that same moonlight.
I was sitting at my window counting the minutes, swearing it would be "any second" that my brother came through the front door.
And when I saw him come swaggering out of that car, I knew this would be the end of something.
I could practically smell the alcohol from my hiding spot on the staircase.
I heard the way Bryce's name sounded in my mother's mouth, the way her syllables came out like bullets.
And I heard the way his voice didn't falter when he screamed, the way he could get lost inside anger.
And I heard the way my mother could match him, and I imagined them both being swallowed whole by their rage.
And then I heard Bryce's threat.
And I heard the slap; resonating louder than the slap I felt once ever could.
It ate the entire house, each and every airwave.
I ran with all the strength I had back to my room, back to my comfort spot beneath the window.
I played those chords as loud as I could manage, strumming in a robotic fashion each note I could remember, each half-written song.
Just so that I wouldn't have to hear their anger anymore.
And my mother came in, with her eyes so dark I saw storm clouds, and told me to stop playing.
She disappeared; I dropped the guitar but stayed right beneath the window.
Bryce came in soon, collapsing onto his bed.
There was a gash down the side of his face.
I was never allowed to touch Bryce.
But I went over to him with a handful of mashed tissues, blotting the blood until they were soaked through.
He shoved me off at first, but the tears hanging at the corners of his eyes told me to stay.
I wanted to hate my mother.
I wanted to hate her with all of my being. For telling me to stop playing, for soaking these tissues with blood, for reducing Bryce to this crumpled form beneath me who didn't have the strength to tell me to get the hell away from him.
But I couldn't.
Because she promised to love me through every hour.
So the only person I could hate was Bryce.
And only because he made her eyes go dark.
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When I was twelve, my mother didn't give me anything.
Except for all the things I never wanted.
She and Bryce were mid-screaming match, the words eating away at the foundation of our very house.
And the world went silent when the door slammed, and Bryce went racing across the street.
My mother followed him.
"Bryce!" She pleaded, somewhere between fury and desperation.
But Bryce didn't turn around.
I had followed them both through the door, standing on the driveway in Bryce's old windbreaker and my pajamas, asking why there were all these wars at my address.
And then my mother took off after him, galloping across the road full speed.
None of us saw the car.
And then there was the scream; the scream that ripped my soul in two.
And crunching and breaking and those heart wrenching screams and Bryce and I's heavy footsteps and these hollers into the black night, for anyone, anything.
Take us away, please. God, take us away.
I dropped to my knees at her deformed body, and I felt her blood soaking me through – a human tissue.
Bryce screamed and cried and raged and fell into two distinct pieces right in front of me.
But I remained absolutely still, like my ligaments would rip.
All I could think of was the fact that those same slivers of moonlight that she comforted me from for so many years were now falling across her.
She was rushed to the hospital, and Bryce forced the paramedics to allow us to ride with her.
I didn't say a word.
Bryce mumbled some half-forgotten prayer.
I couldn't remember one thing I ever learned at Catholic school.
The night dragged on longer then the empty years that would soon follow.
The last moment I can remember of my mother was being shoved into that hospital room.
It reeked of disinfectant and impersonal goodbyes.
Bryce knew.
The doctors told him, and I knew only because my nineteen year old brother suddenly looked forty nine.
He sat in a chair in the far corner of the room with his head in his hands, and I listened to him wail – a sound that I had never heard from anyone before.
My mother's screams were still playing like a looping cassette in my mind.
And I wanted to hate.
I wanted to hate my brother, for the things he did. For running across the street. For not turning around.
I wanted to hate my mother, for caring about him at all. For running to him. For not seeing the car.
And most of all, I wanted to hate myself. For standing in that driveway. For not stopping Bryce, stopping my mother. For making them stop loving and hating each other in the same breath. For not running for her.
But I couldn't figure who I hated most.
So I bent down beside my mother and grabbed her hand and she looked up at me, through these hazed eyes that were halfway between here and some other world I never wanted to see.
"You can't leave." I told her. "You just – you can't, Mom."
Her head lolled, but I wanted so badly to believe she could hear me.
But she could always hear me.
The same way she could hear my guitar chords all these years through a heavy door.
"But – but what about my guitar? And, and the chords you taught me? I'm still gunna play till my fingers bleed but… you won't be there and –"
Everything came out at the speed of that car, jumbled and lost and tangled up inside me.
"And Bryce. Mom, you can't give up on Bryce. Because – because he needs someone to tell him not to do what he does and… he won't listen to me. Not in a million years."
Suddenly, I knew what it was to lose yourself inside what you feel.
Because I was finally feeling my grief, and for the first time I was waking up.
"And me, Mom!" I cried, my tears like rivers on my face. "Mommy, what about me?! You promised me!" I sobbed. "You promised me you'd love me! Through every hour! And… and I don't think, I don't think anyone else will! But if you leave, then I'll have to keep loving you! And I don't want to. Because then you lied. You lied because you promised! Because you promised me you'd always… love me…"
I was squeezing her hand and it was turning blue, but I didn't care.
I just dropped my head onto her chest and felt everything I'd ever felt in my twelve years wash over me.
The world was ending.
And then Bryce came over to me, and he put his hand on my shoulder.
And then he wrapped his arms around me from the back.
But Bryce and I never touched – we weren't supposed to.
But my brother was holding me, and I didn't push him away.
"Roger -"
My face went white and my tears halted; I hung on her words.
"Roger – I will –" Her words were throaty, unearthly, and she had to stall to breathe to finish her sentence. "Always … love you."
"Promise me!" I demanded.
"Through… every hour…"
Bryce let go of me and jumped out of his skin when the heart monitor wailed and the line went straight.
"Mom!" I screamed. "Mom!"
I softened into cries.
"I can't… feel your heartbeat anymore…"
And the last time I ever saw my mother, I had to see her with those dark, dark eyes.
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When I was eighteen, I left for the city.
My brother had been made my legal guardian after my mother's death, and immediately put me in therapy.
It killed just about whatever relationship we could have had.
The city was right for me, from the first moment.
Everything was steel and chrome, no memories spared, anonymity and too fast to feel anything.
It was exactly the world I wanted.
All I had was a street corner gig, a guitar on my back and broken eyes.
The towering black man that gave me a quarter he couldn't spare each morning invited me into his loft.
"It's a shithole," he told me, "but it's my shithole."
It became mine too.
Soon enough, I was the front man of a band that commanded CBCG's every night.
And I would play till my fingers bled and sometimes I'd see my mom's figure in the smoke-clouded room.
So, I would keep playing.
Beneath the pumping base and the blaring acoustic, I swear I could hear her heartbeat.
But at night, after the screaming of the crowd stopped, I'd hear my own.
Mumbled, in the back of my throat, longing for the pieces of myself that had been gone since I was twelve.
So when the girl with red hair and the eyes that were so light it was like the world was inside her offered me paradise, I took it.
Because it's as if you're the world's one mistake.
Because there are all these locked doors inside you and all you want to do is break them down.
Because it gets so hard to keep running, and all you want is to just stand in one place.
To be gone.
And, of course, because she promised me that she would love me.
And at night, when everything was tinted purple-green and my covers felt like oceans on my skin, I would hear my mother.
She would tell me to stop.
"Stop wrecking yourself, because I love you.
I will love you through every hour."
And I just wanted to keep hearing her.
I just wanted her to want me to stop; to love me enough.
So I kept going.
But then, the girl who swore she could love me died.
And the blood was as red as the hair on her head.
And her eyes were that dark; the dark that I feared.
Because the most horrific things took place in that same dark.
And there was moonlight.
The slivers from my childhood.
And that was when I learned why eyes go dark.
Because they feel too much.
Because they're tinted by the darkness in their mind.
Because they want so badly to be touched by something, to feel something.
So, all in the same moment, I learned that love wasn't real.
It was all an elaborate hoax; something people wanted to believe they were swept up into.
To feel something.
Hate was real. Anger was real. Disconnection was real.
Love was vague.
Love was a lie.
The moment April's heartbeat was gone, so was my mother's.
And I think mine was too.
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And to this day, I still see dark eyes.
And I still hear screams.
And the scariest thing about my world is this:
I can never tell if they are those of my red-haired girl,
my mother,
or my own.