2x03 The Psychology of Letting Go
"Did you even know about the ostrich that raised a tiger cub?" Was Jeff's sarcastic comeback. Britta opened her mouth to reply but was interrupted by an uncharacteristically subdue Troy, who walked into the study room with a haunted look on his face.
"Troy, what's wrong?" Shirley asked, concerned.
"Just saw a dead body." Troy's voice was shaky as he plopped down into a chair. His usual vivacity was gone, and his eyes remained wide and unblinking.
"Well, I told you not to use the east stairwell." Shirley scolded lightly. "My pastor said its meth season."
"You know, I'm living with Pierce now so, this morning I went to do laundry in the garage and I found his mum. Dead." Troy recounted lifelessly. Gasps resounded from all three girls in the room.
"Troy! That's terrible!" Annie exclaimed, hugging her hands in close to her chest.
"Well, she had been in bad shape for a while, so I guess she crawled out there to die like a cat." Troy's voice broke on the last word. He shook his head, trying to find the words. "I've never been that close to a dead body before."
The girls all 'aww'ed simultaneously and gathered around Troy, placing their hands reassuringly on his shoulders and attempting to comfort him. Britta, Annie and Shirley were all so preoccupied with Troy that none of them caught the way Jeff paled slightly and sucked in a deep breath in an attempt to suppress the onslaught of memories that Troy's description of Pierce's mother's dead body was bringing back.
"She was so cold and gray." Troy's words reverberated in his mind. Troy may never have seen a dead body before, but Jeff had...
10- year-old Jeff Winger tried to duck the wadded up paper balls being thrown at his head as he dismounted the yellow school bus to a haunting chorus of "Tinkle town! Tinkle town!" Jeff slowly wandered home beneath the baking summer sun, he had gotten off the bus three blocks earlier just to avoid the taunting of his fellow school mates. He could feel his eyes begin to prickle as the cruel words echoed in his mind, but he pushed these feelings down and buried them in his heart. He was a Winger, he was a man, he would not cry. That would make him a 'pussy', just like his dad always said.
Jeff could feel the sweat gathering on his forehead and a drop slithered down his neck as he trudged up the stone pathway to his front door. The door was locked. Odd, because his mother's dark blue Mercedes was parked in the driveway, why would she have locked the door if she was home?
Jeff sat his bag down on the front step and dug through it to find his spare key. His mother had given it to him two years ago during his parents' divorce. She went to see her lawyer most days after work, and so no one was home until late. Sometimes, Jeff got so scared when he was home alone, that he turned on every light in the house, wrapped himself up in his blanket and hid under the bed until his mother came home.
Jeff unlocked the door, expecting to be enveloped in cool air, but it was just as hot and stuffy inside as it was out. Jeff frowned. That was unusual, his mother always had the air conditioning on when it was warm because of her perpetual fear of unsightly sweat. He dumped his bag and shoes by the door, padding down the hallway and bumping on the A/C as he passed.
"Mum?" He called out, but there was no answer. Jeff poked his head in the kitchen, then the living room, but there was no sign of her. 'Maybe she went for a walk.' Jeff reasoned as he wandered down the hallway to check their bedrooms. He passed his own bedroom, glancing briefly at the glow-in-the-dark stars that he had stuck to the ceiling while sitting atop his father's shoulders, and then at the web-like dent in the wall where his father had tried to kick him but missed because he was drunk. Again.
Jeff continued on to what was once his parents' bedroom, thinking maybe his mother was taking a nap, but the bed was empty. He did, however, notice his mother's handbag sitting on the chair by the door, which meant she was definitely here somewhere, she never went anywhere without it. Jeff turned around, heading to search the backyard, when he heard a solid thud from behind him. He peered over his shoulder and saw that one of his mother's black high heels now lay at the foot of the bed. He wasn't sure why, but he could feel his chest tighten with cold dread and his heart suddenly raced.
Jeff tentatively inched through the doorway. He saw feet dangling a short distance from the end of the bed, one was bare and the other wore a black high heel. Jeff's eyes followed the feet up long, skinny legs, over a black skirt and purple, silk blouse, and finally, up to the face of his mother. Jeff stepped forward and wrapped his hands around his mother's ankle, trying to pull her down from the thick rope wrapped around her neck, all the while calling for his mother to wake up. The ceiling fan swayed and creaked ominously the harder he tugged.
Jeff stumbled backwards, looking around for any way to get his mother back down on the floor and wake her up. That's when he noticed the folded paper that sat on the bed, his name written on the front in his mother's curly handwriting. He paused for a moment, before snatching up the note and retreating to the far corner of the room, unwilling to look at his mother's body any longer.
With shaking fingers, Jeff unfolded the note; his mother's elegant writing filled the page.
'My dearest, darling Jeffery.
I am truly sorry if you had to find me this way, but I have been thinking dark thoughts such as this for two years now, and they have finally overwhelmed me. Please don't blame yourself Jeffery, it is your father who is to blame. The pain and humiliation of his leaving is just too great, and it has not lessened one bit over the years. The shame and indignation of divorce is a wound from which I cannot recover.' The page blurred in front of Jeff's eyes and he could not make out the rest. He wiped at his eyes furiously and skipped to the last lines, desperate to read his mother's last words before the tears overwhelmed him.
'You are a special boy Jeffery. You are perfect in every way and soon you will no longer need me, and so I have nothing left to live for. You will do great things my darling son; I love you so very much. One day, when you're older, you will understand why I did what I did, and then, I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
Love Mum.'
Jeff carefully folded the note back up and slid it into his breast pocket as tears gouged rivers into his rosy little cheeks. He cried softly for hours, he cried through hiccups and headaches, he cried until his tears dried up and he could not physically cry anymore. And when the tears no longer came, all Jeff could do was stare at his mother's dangling feet. One shoe on, one shoe off.
It was two days before they found him. The school became worried when he never showed up, and when they couldn't contact either of his parents, they called the police. And in all that time, Jeff didn't move. He drifted in and out of consciousness when he was tired, but he didn't sleep; he shivered violently through the cold nights, but he didn't get up to change the A/C; his stomach growled and hunger pains stabbed through his abdomen, but he didn't move; when the smell of decaying flesh and rotting meat reached his nose, he didn't flinch; and when they finally, finally bust down the door and scoop him up, the small, broken boy didn't react, he merely watched over the policeman's shoulder as three others cut down his mother's lifeless body.
His grandmother came to pick him up the next day. He would live with her from now on. And little Jeffery told himself it wouldn't be so bad. This would be his chance to reinvent himself – to become someone else, like that smart looking lawyer his dad hired for the divorce, with his tailored suit and sky blue Mercedes. Someone who commanded respect from everyone, even bullies like 'Big Cheese', someone who had power, and could do anything he wanted, someone who could never be hurt by anyone or anything. That's what he wanted to be, and so that's what he turned himself into.
Jeff was broken out of his haunting reverie by Pierce's merrily whistling appearance. Jeff had thought no one had noticed his little daydream-turned-nightmare, but Abed had. His head cocked to the side in curiously, closely studying Jeff's expression and demeanour. Abed deduced (correctly, of course) that Jeff was having some kind of greyscale coloured flashback scene of a painful childhood memory. Jeff then joined in with the group's conversation and Abed assumed the flashback was over. He paid the strange occurrence no mind, he was already aware that the leading male character was haunted by a dark and painful past. But that's what made Jeff, Jeff.