The Ties That Bind
show: Young & the Restless
central character(s): Travis Crawford, Sharon Collins
Summary: They were linked by and through one man. / Or, in which Julia Crawford and Doris Collins for the first time. AU.
Notes: I've been wrestling with myself to decide if I wanted to start this companion piece slash sequel to The Pursuit of Happiness. I CANNOT stress this enough: you MUST read The Pursuit of Happiness before you move on to this story. It IS long, but it's worth it to get the full scope of this story. There are a lot of dynamics here that are explored even some weird ones but it all makes sense when it's all put together. AGAIN, YOU MUST read The Pursuit of Happiness to understand this one. There may be a third part that is tied to this one, but I am still deciding. Ghana is a beautiful place for inspiration and I had a lot of it.
Notes 2: When you picture Adelaide Collins, picture Sharon Case playing her. If I were to cast her, Sharon Case would be playing her.
Dedications: This is for my girls, Arre and Bex, who loved the idea of Travis and Sharon being long lost siblings as much as I do. This could have happened. The Crawford-Collins Clan should have been allowed to rise, tbh.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Young and the Restless. I don't expect any financial gains from this and I have this is just being done for entertainment and imagination. Happy reading.
June 2016
Seattle, Washington
Julia Crawford wasn't looking for the life of a private investigator nor did it find her. Rather, they collided with each other through the happenings of circumstance and uncertainty. She was an unexpected widow, had terminated her second pregnancy because she couldn't manage two young children. Not when the one child she had need every bit of her love and attention. She was always fine-tuned to pick on the sensitivities of other people. When a person lied, she saw what others did not: the thin layer of sweat on a person's upper lip, the way they played with their hands not in a fidgety, spastic manner. Rather, it was methodical. Sometimes, they tapped their fingers rhythmically or cracked one knuckle after. Although the deceiver could try as possible to keep themselves outwardly still, physiology betrayed them: the flushing of the skin, the smallest involuntary twitch of the corner of the mouth and the telltale sign of racing heart visible in the form of a pulse going at hummingbird speed. That was how to gently step in someone's truth if they let her in and sometimes, Julia had to kick some doors open to others.
This new truth wasn't just a singular one. It was the culmination of several. They were like breakable threads that stitched themselves into different coloured pieces of fabric. She didn't ask to be part of this ugly quilt and yet the stitches ran above, beneath and through her. Julia became intertwined with pasts, presents, and future. She became entrenched in the here now and the thereafter. She did not touch this one door and yet, it blew wide open.
She wasn't looking for the afterlife, and yet the afterlife found her.
—
The first time this happened, Julia had to check if her sobriety had left her without her awareness. No, she still had her wits about her. It was the eighth of June two thousand and sixteen. She was born in Somerset, England yet resided in Seattle, Washington on 498 Culver Crescent. The president was still Barack Obama. Right then. Could she have been sleep deprived? Well, yes, but Julia was aware of that being one of her natural states. She wasn't so deprived of rest that it had triggered this. Nothing could have triggered this.
When it was just seeing Raymond, Julia had gotten used to it. She even liked having his company around. It was consistent and of course, there were clear reasons when he would visit. He only visited now and never haunted her anymore. He still smelled like freshly cut grass and earth. Julia had started dating Matthew. It was all very new to her: the butterflies, the banter and the soft touches, the perfect way their styles of work complemented each other, the way they could find the other's hands and their fingers easily intertwined.
But there was always the thread of Raymond Collins that ran through it all, lingering around like a ghost. Sometimes, in literal terms. She loved him, stupidly couldn't let him go and selfishly held on to him. Julia was insane enough to see him and touch him as though it were physical. In this moment where Julia had stretched herself after an unusually restful state of sleep, she had been shocked awake as morning light trickled its way in. Her breath caught in her throat. Panic gripped her like cold rough hands against hot skin.
Julia also didn't move because she was beautiful. Her movements were graceful and she seemed to float in her white dress. Her feet were small but caked with dirt as if she walked through a forest too large for her. Her hair fell freely in loose waves and was the colour of gold that tried to get its shine back and never quite did. She walked around her living room, face alight in wonder and curiosity. The woman floated around until she saw the flowers Matthew had left her on her desk.
She pulled one out its resting place, smelled it. A soft smile that made her glow appeared on her face and she smoothly placed it back. The woman hummed softly running a finger over the small rim of the vase. With a guttural cry of anger that made Julia swallow the bile in her throat, she threw the glass vase and made the shards sparkle on her tiled kitchen floor.
The blonde woman continued her movements and then stopped dead in her tracks.
"You're her," she said, soft as the wind. Julia deduced she was either stunned or soft spoken. She said it again, this time voice louder and eyes narrowed in scrutiny. "You're her. You can see me. You see everything,"
"No, I can't," Julia blurted out, and then cursed. "I don't. Listen, I have no idea what's happening. I know I'm not this knackered. It's too early to be drunk."
The woman smiled and Julia saw both Raymond and Travis looking back at her through her eyes. There were three generations carried within one body in her living room. Julia felt tears pooling in her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek to stop her lip from trembling. She dug her nails in the palms of her hands so the physical pain was her focus. Not the damn gift her mother said was hereditary among generations of women in her mother's family. Julia peeled her gaze away from the faint purple ligature marks around the woman's neck.
"I'm Adelaide. You're Julia, and him," she took a framed photo of Travis, slender fingers stroking the glass softly, "He's my family."
"That's right," she agreed slowly in the manner one uses to navigate being in a small cage with a big, beautiful white tiger. Adelaide was a striking woman but Raymond had inherited her tendency to hop on an emotional carousel that could start slow and became too fast for everyone else to hang on to for dear life. "Of course, he's your family. He's your grandson."
Adelaide glanced at the photo in her hands and raised confused green eyes to Julia's gaze.
She tilted her head slightly, "Grandson?"
"Yes."
"But Ray is too young to have children," Adelaide said, with a laugh that sounded like bells. She loved Raymond, Julia could see that at the very least. "He's…only seven."
"No, no," Julia corrected, moving around her to open the glass case. Her hands moved quickly as her eyes searched the old box of photos. She flipped through them, making Adelaide's gaze on her back. Yes, finally. Julia brandished an old photo of Raymond. It was their wedding day photo taken outside City Hall. Adelaide took the photo from her, allowing Julia to retrieve the photo of her son. She watched Adelaide furrow her brows together and then her face relaxed. "This was our wedding photo."
"My son is only a little boy. He's too young to get married."
"But he did," Julia corrected, a little sharper than she intended. She apologized, although it made no impact on Adelaide and dear God, she was apologizing and was making nice with a ghost. A fucking ghost. This was a Dickens story gone horribly wrong. Lana was right and next time, she was going to sock that miserable bitch in the mouth. Julia was crazy. She was going mad, a falcon turning into cuckoo bird. "See, look. Raymond grew up after you, uh, left. He met and married me," she pointed to herself, "and together, we had Travis. Him," Julia finished explaining, while placing the framed photo back on the mantle. "That's your grandson."
Adelaide looked up, blinked at her and then like a shot, fingers as tight as a steel trap circled around Julia's wrist. Her skin felt hot, burning. It was as if Adelaide could brand a bit of herself underneath her skin. If some ways, that is what she was doing. Julia felt her anger and her heart raced as if Adelaide's urgency was her own.
Her eyes were vacant and the more Julia pulled, the tighter Adelaide's grip got.
"Let. Go," Julia said, slowly through gritted teeth. She couldn't tell where the pain ended and the anger started but they bled together. The reds and blues created purples. The red bubbling inside of Julia and the yellow-gold in Adelaide's hair made orange above her. All these colours merged together to make black beneath her.
"Don't let him see the darkness."
Adelaide relaxed her grip before dropping it altogether. Julia glared at her and with a grimace, rubbed her wrist.
"Who the fuck are you talking about?"
"My grandson, of course. You said he was," she replied, with a sunny smile. "Is he a good person?"
"I like to think I raised a good person but I don't expected Travis to be perfect," Julia answered, tentatively. She suddenly felt cold snake itself around her and she forced herself to not to shiver. "Yes. He is."
"Okay," Adelaide replied, smile and warmth still intact. She walked around until she stared at the couch. When she sat, her white dress burst around her like a cloud. Julia watched her fold her hands in her lap and as if they were friends requested something. "I'd like some tea, please."
"What did you mean when you said Travis can't see darkness?"
Adelaide smiled that smile – the one in the old picture. Sharon really did look like her. If they had been born in the same generation, they would have been identical twin sisters. It was the smile that left her flawless, mysterious and one that held her own secret knowledge. What could she have known about Travis that she – his own mother – didn't?
She shrugged, playing with a thin errant thread of her dress.
"Sometimes, he's there. Monsters follow him."
"I'm not giving you any damn tea," Julia walked over and met Adelaide in the eye. She was never going to give an apparition anything. Certainly, not any tea. "You tell me right now what the hell you're going on about."
She looked up and laughed that bell sounding laugh again. "You have dark things inside of you, too, Julia," and she watched Adelaide settle into the couch, the edges of her dress now the colour of a slow churning tornado ready to carve a path of destruction. Her eyes carried a glint that made them a bit wild, a touch feral. Her smile never faded but it was no longer warm. Adelaide spoke again with a dangerous type of calm that was chilling. Against her will, it made Julia's heart race and the fine hairs on her forearms raise themselves. "I really would like that tea now."
—
She closed her eyes for a few seconds and rubbed a temple in exasperation. Julia just needed to breathe. Breathe Julia Elizabeth. Just fucking breathe. But there was always a stream of sanity in a sea of insanity. When she opened her eyes, Adelaide was gone. This time Julia let herself shiver as she wrapped her arms around herself. She was awake, not one trace of sleep in her eyes.
Julia was alive, awake and breathing and that scared her the most.
September 2016
Madison, Wisconsin
Her life was an interesting one, twisted like a pretzel too big to consume. She left British aristocracy to find American normalcy, married at the age where moments were most terrifying and exhilarating. She stood face-to-face with Raymond repeating wedding vows told by a judge at city hall instead of the family estate. Her white dress wasn't from an expensive boutique. Her family wasn't there to celebrate. Julia didn't have her sisters as bridesmaids, her mother's soft encouraging words in Russian or Lord Theodore Crawford, 7th Earl of Bath – or rather, her father – to give her away. Julia wore a long white sundress from the thrift store, a dollar store veil and held a bouquet of white daises picked from the park across the street. Raymond only wore a white T-shirt and worn blue jeans with boots but he was so handsome.
The only expensive, sentimental items were their wedding rings: a simple silver wedding band she had picked at a pawn shop for fifty dollars and the skinny wedding ring that belonged to his mother. Raymond smiled, making her smile as the judge continued the vows.
"Do you, Julia Elizabeth Crawford, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"
"I do," she responded as he brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to it.
"Do you, Raymond Dean Collins, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
"Hell yes. I'd be stupid if I didn't," he answered, cheekily and then upon seeing her look of incredulousness and annoyance, he shrugged. The judge blinked and Raymond turned sheepish, looking like a child that had been caught drawing on the walls. Julia watched him turn on the charm with a brilliant smile. "Sorry, Your Honor. I mean, I do."
The judge cleared his throat and Julia bit her lip to keep from laughing.
"I unequivocally, undoubted wish to absolutely take this otherworldly creation of a woman to be my lawful wedded wife to have and hold etcetera and so forth until the end of our days—" he was cut off by a hard pinch to the side, making him cry out and curse under his breath. He offered an apologetic smile. "You'll pardon the lady. My English Rose here, is a bit antsy because of the honeymoon…"
Julia's green eyes widened, jaw dropping before she rubbed her temple. She turned to the judge, "Bloody hell… I'm marrying a madman, Disregard him."
The older man sighed with exasperation, "By the powers vested in me by the state of Washington, I hereby pronounce you man and wife," he directed a pointed look toward Raymond. "Kiss your bride and kindly leave. Congratulations."
His hands were warm on her cheeks as he bent down and kissed her. Julia felt in that moment like she didn't need the grand wedding. She didn't need to be the Earl's daughter, or the future Countess of Bath. She certainly didn't need to have the British elite — most of whom would be there for their own prestige. Julia was happy – truly completely in the middle of happiness and trapped in a whirlwind of bliss.
How couldn't she have known? As Julia danced with him to Hey Jude on a bar floor, and his big hand on the small of her back made her feel safe, why didn't she know? While Raymond made love to her in their little Seattle with a police siren ringing out sharply, why did she not wonder what Raymond's life before her? There was one night when they argued one night – when he yelled, she yelled right back – so angrily, Julia felt as though Raymond was splashing gasoline all over the apartment and daring her to drop the match. So, she did. Julia went to slap that bloody son of a bitch with her let but he caught her wrist. A normal woman would have snatched her back but normal was never their thing. Instead, Julia slapped him with the right. The thunderclap from her hand to Raymond's face long rang in the air long after. She was heavily breathing, tired and spent.
Julia didn't know where the anger had come from. She didn't know why her heart raced so quickly, she feared it might just stop. When Raymond looked at her with an unreadable look, he kissed her and it did. Was she so dizzy with the rapture that conceived their son that she wouldn't question what lead him here? Julia could have wondered when Raymond battled his bipolar disorder but she didn't understand. She could have wondered when the scratchy voice of John Lennon singing Watching the Wheels drowned out her screaming. Julia could have had a moment of clarity and understanding but she shook so badly upon seeing the pool of blood around his still form and sunlight hitting the gun next to him. She could have. Should have. Probably would have for Travis' sake, but Julia just wanted her baby. `
All Julia wanted was her little boy. She was a widow now, gone mad with worry. All she could do to be remotely sane was conjure up Travis' little face even though it caused her to hurt. He looked so much like his father. It was as if she wasn't there, watching another woman run up and down the hallways banging on every door she could find until she banged on the babysitter's door. When the babysitter handed her son, she wondered. But she didn't wonder too much. She couldn't. Julia found comfort feeling the weight of her child in her arms.
That's why all of this felt so strange to her She didn't understand why because Julia herself had opened a kind of Pandora's box. When Julia applied her private investigator's mind and the maternal instinct, this lid had been blown wide open. Questions in silence for years were now given voices. Julia didn't hear them smoothly or in a linear way. She heard them loudly, distorted and disjoined and for once, Julia got some understanding of how Raymond's thought process must have They carried Julia to Michigan where Raymond's life had started, to Madison where his life had suffocated him and them to Seattle where his life ended.
He may have loathed one and loved the other but here Julia was staring at the woman Raymond left. Doris Collins simply stared back at her before she said, "Come in. Call me Doris," and wheeled away, leaving Julia to walk away and close the apartment door behind her.
—
Julia sat in the little apartment, letting her green eyes sweep over the space. She took in the wooden coffee table. On it sat the cup of tea Julia knew she wasn't going to drink but accepted to be polite. The ivory chairs were soft although they were scratchy against her skin. One thing about being private investigator was the idea that you had to be aware of space. Empty spaces spoke when people didn't. Doris Collins' apartment should have said it was homey despite being alone. But it gave Julia the impression that the house was just like her demeanor: frosty. Luckily for her, she could handle frosty with warm understanding or searing, point blank frankness. This woman wasn't a client. Anything but. She would admit that Julia she looked at the mantle more carefully, she pinpointed the picture of a little girl blonde with bright green eyes and a smile that showed her innocence.
Sharon. The girl with the uncanny and frankly, alarming resemblance to her grandmother, Adelaide Collins. She happened to be Travis' grandmother, too. He had her eye shape but had Byron's blue eyes. Julia was just half an hour from Genoa City. This was so heavy and Julia quietly swore at Raymond for making her think about this. She hated that he knew her tendency to be an investigative bloodhound and used it against her. She blew an angry, exasperated breath and ruffled her black hair a bit. It had started to grow out again. Stupid dead bastard.
Doris' knowing voice snapped Julia out of her scattered thoughts.
"That's my daughter, Sharon. She was five there," Doris explained, glancing from the picture of her daughter frozen to forever to be a child to her. She frowned and there was a look directed at her that bordered an accusatory glance. Julia let her defenses slowly build, brick by practical brick. Yet she could not help but feel the tiniest bit of offense. She sat rock still in her wheelchair and continued. "That year Ray left her. Left us. Ray walked her to school. He always liked to do that. He didn't believe in cars, although he did drive. With Sharon, he liked to walk with her. Show her things along the way so she learned things before school and after. I never understood that but he wanted to give her knowledge…"
"Because Raymond didn't believe in things learnt in the classroom," Julia finished. She recalled knowing that he wasn't inept at school or learning. On the contrary, Raymond was quite brilliant. He had graduated high school at eighteen rather than at sixteen like Travis had done but that's where the similarities between father and son ended. Unlike his father, Travis did go on to college and get a degree, majoring in economics with a minor in philosophy. His father, however, had a strong belief that all institutions were the devil and sometimes, irrelevant.
—
"Our boy is doing what I didn't want to,"Raymond said, quietly while Julia resided in that space between reality and imagination. His fingers played with her hair like ribbons. A small stab for guilt pierced her. Matthew's face appeared in her mind's eye but it wasn't clear and could fade like a wisp of smoke any time.
"Which is what exactly?"she asked with a raise of her eyebrow. His fingers were usually warm today as she absentmindedly played with them like she used to. "Hmm?"
"Being smart enough to land somewhere great."
"I thought you said Wall Street was the cesspool of establishment hell," Julia remarked, with a laugh. You're still anti-establishment and yet praise the tenth circle of hell."
"I said great for Travis. Not for me,"he clarified with a kiss in her hair and a smile she felt. "I've always wanted good things for him."
—
The woman in the wheelchair looked away from her, an obvious frown on her face.
"You know more than I do," she muttered, bitterly. Julia wasn't sure whether it was intended as an inside thought or as a backhanded insult to her but either way, she didn't appreciate it all that much. She was here for her son, to give him the full right to get to know a part of himself long hidden. His half-sister was a stone's throw away from him. According to Travis, he and Sharon were getting to be good friends independent of his relationship with Victoria Newman which was serious at this point. Julia had yet to meet the woman her son had fallen hard for but Victoria seemed lovely enough.
Didn't this woman want the same kind of wholeness for her daughter?
Before Julia could form a proper retort and possibly exit, brown eyes the color of standing water turn dirty with time pierced her.
"You tell me that your son might be Sharon's half-brother," she questioned, with skepticism. "Why haven't I ever heard of you?"
Julia rolled her green eyes, despite forcing herself not to.
"For the same reason I hadn't heard of you. He never told me about you or Sharon until recently," Julia explained, careful not to let the fact that she had the ability to see and speak to not only her dead husband but that other inhabitants of the afterlife trickled in due to a faraway door left ajar. "He…uh, came to me in a dream. He had been doing that for a while," she continued. It was a half-truth and that would have to be enough. The whole truth was too crazy for anyone to accept and the whole truth was too precious to share with anyone. "I was a little intoxicated but he told me find the girl in the roses."
At this, Doris Collins' eyebrow rose before the significance of roses dawned on her.
"The Rose of Sharon."
Julia nodded, "Exactly right. A few months ago, I had to tell my son about Raymond. It was the very first time I had even mentioned him but I had to. It was painful but my son had the right to know. Travis is the type of person to explode in anger, wind down to suffer in silence and then think things through. Not necessarily in that order but that's how he is. It took a lot of time and it was painful but I had to do it. I'm sorry to offend you with this question but…" she paused, and let a moment pass between and through them as she much as Julia hated it. The green-eyed monster bared its claws and punctured a lung with them. But Matthew was a good man and her perfect match in ways Raymond wasn't. That should have been enough. It's never enough. It never will be enough with us, Jules. You're mine, Raymond whispered in her ear. His hand lay on her thigh and the sharp coldness of his fingers through her jeans felt like frostbite. She discreetly flinched but continued her line of questioning again. "I don't mean to offend you but did you ever tell Sharon about her father?"
Doris paused again, a little longer this time and pressed her lips together tightly. She shifted in her chair. She bristled like a cat who arched its back against someone's touch and had a low hissing sound buried in its chest, slowly creeping up their throat.
"No," the woman ground out so quietly Julia had to strain her ear to hear it properly. Doris' head snapped up and those eyes met hers, but they were angry. Full of rage she'd held back for years. Julia understood that kind of rage because as much as she still loved Raymond, it was ever present. The sadness sat on her like a heavy cloak her shoulders couldn't bear. The disbelief at times stretched the boundaries of her skull and the rage rattled deep in her chest. Doris said the word again and this time it was like an arrow shot through the heart. "No, I didn't tell Sharon about Ray. She knew enough about him and as she got older, she stopped asking."
"I see," Julia replied, letting her British accent come to the fore stronger than usual, but smoother. She needed to be smooth enough to get Doris to be open and the right amount of friction to keep her talking. If any of those two factors were out of balance, the steel trap in Doris' head would snap shut and Julia herself, would grow frustrated at trying again. So, Julia kept her composure, the epitome of cool and calm. She stared at the woman across from her. "May I ask why?"
"No, you can't," Doris answered, bluntly and then sighed, resigned. "But you're going to ask."
"Of course, I will," Julia shot back, with the same sharp bluntness but with cool undertones. "While we're being blunt here, I had no idea of Raymond's history when I met him. I wasn't the other woman. I wasn't a woman who destroyed a family with the knowledge that he had one. I simply met him and we grew attracted to each other. I didn't ask him myself because I had my own issues going on in my past. I left my home and my family to escape. I left the country. He loved me. He married me and we built a life with our son. If I had the slightest clue," Julia said, with all the conviction in her body and all the seriousness in her heart, "that Raymond had a daughter out there in the world somewhere, I would have looked for you earlier. I would have looked for Sharon earlier. I really didn't come here to bring up any pain for you, and I apologize if I did."
"We didn't love each other when I got pregnant with Sharon. I had dreams of my own. I was an only child, myself. I met him at a party. We had sex and I got pregnant. My father said I was a disgrace and my mother forced me to marry the father of the baby because she wouldn't have me bring a bastard into the world," Doris explained, with tears in her eyes and barked out a bitter laugh. "They called my baby a bastard because I wasn't married and didn't want to. But Ray and I got married in our living room when I was six months pregnant and the marriage license was signed. That was it. I was Ray's wife. After the marriage," she continued, back to being steely while Julia listened. She really listened because in some ways, their lives mirrored each other, "my parent bought us a house in Madison and I told them I didn't want anything to do with them ever again."
"Then what happened?"
"Well, it was a rough marriage. Rough pregnancy. But when I had my girl, I fell in love with her, so did Ray," she remembered and smiled, wistfully. "He really did love her in his own way. She was beautiful and perfect and I swore to do the best I could to raise her."
"It was the same with my boy. You're scared out of your mind and then you see this perfect being in your arms and you're calm. Travis was born with Raymond's last name, but I had it legally changed to my last name after he died. It was too painful to leave it that way. I was the only parent Travis had," she added, morosely.
"Travis – that's his name? Your son."
Julia nodded with a smile of her own. "Yes. He named him. I almost said no to Travis, because the name was so unusual at the time but Raymond merely smiled and said that was the point. Unusual is good, Jules, he said. So, I said okay. His middle name was something we decided together. Jude after the Beatles song, Hey Jude."
"Raymond chose her middle name. Ophelia."
She blinked.
"I'm sorry… I beg your pardon?"
"Sharon Ophelia Collins. That was the name for our daughter. I wanted Mary. Anne. Jane. Anything. But like your son, he gave our daughter an unusual middle name," Doris mused, with a tone of reflection. "Ray was an unusual person."
"That he was," Julia replied, running a hand through her dark hair. She peered past Doris to see Raymond in the middle of lighting a cigarette between his lips. He looked up at her and blinked. She raised an eyebrow, questioning him.
Ophelia? Seriously?
What? I like Shakespeare, Raymond replied, with a flippant shrug of his own and went back to completing the task of lighting his cigarette. He cast a quick look at Doris, pulling a face. Holy fuck. She really let herself go.
Oh, shut up and smoke, you twisted sod.
Raymond smiled and winked.
Julia cursed under her breath, causing Doris to look at her curiously.
"Are you alright?"
It wasn't so unusual as it was ironic. Raymond gave his daughter the middle name Ophelia. She knew Ophelia as a character in Hamlet because she had read it multiple times, forward and backwards. Raymond gave his child the middle after a character who had eventually lost her mind and any semblance of sanity. Sharon Ophelia Collins was the daughter who would inherit his bipolar disorder as an adult and struggle with it for the rest of her life. She was the woman who bore a perfect resemblance to the grandmother wrought with emotional issues. It ended in Adelaide twisting with the help of a noose in a tree. At least, she had the comfort of knowing that Raymond's dark, dry sense of humour stayed as it was. Julia remembered the necklace of purple in her skin the most. Purple with blue around the edges and an ugly shade of red in the center. Julia felt every nerve stretch with tension.
"Yes, yes. I'm fine," she answered, absently and sighed, looking Doris in the eye. "I'm going to ask you something and you have to completely honest with me. Was his behaviour erratic, going from emotional extreme to the next?"
Doris furrowed her brows and sat in the silence of her memories.
"He left me when Sharon was five years old, but yes, he was during the short time we were married. Yes, he was. He would go days without sleep, only to sleep for days after. He would be enraged, then cheerful, and then depressed the next and the cycle would start all over again. Sometimes, he rambled. I remember one time when he was shaking so badly after putting her down for a nap. He was scared of hurting Sharon. He was scared of what he could do to her. Sharon was beautiful and he didn't want to make her ugly. He couldn't break the glass, he said. After her fifth birthday, he said he was going to run an errand and he never came back. Other times, he would ramble and it made no sense to me."
"Doris," Julia said, softly, tearing springing to her eyes. She could feel her skin flush and redden but she pushed them back. It wasn't the time for that and it wasn't about her. Julia swallowed the lump in her throat and forced her lungs to expand around the weight in her chest. "Raymond was erratic because he had a mental illness. At the time, I didn't understand it, but while investigating his past, I figured it out. My sister is a doctor and clarified things for me."
"Why was Ray the way he was?"
"He had bipolar disorder. It's hereditary."
Doris' eyes widened and she whispered, "He was bipolar?"
Julia nodded, and this time, a tear escaped and she whipped it away. The memory of the pool of blood staining the floor would always be with her until she died. Even afterwards. Even after she called her mother sobbing asking to come home, it stayed in her mind refusing to move or change itself. It was watching television with a broken controller even after changing the batteries. The most heartbreaking thing watching Travis who had discovered how to walk – go from room to room, obviously looking for any sign of his father. Sometimes, he verbally asked for dada while continuing his search from one room to the next. They were in England, a whole pond away from Seattle and still Travis looked for his father.
"He left me," Julia sniffled, and her voice broke, "because he killed himself. He committed suicide. He left Travis with the babysitter and I was running an errand when he did it. I came home and found him already gone having bled out on our floor."
"My God," Doris whispered, horrified. "I'm sorry. I can't imagine."
She meant it. It was sincere and Julia merely accepted with a simple thank you when nothing about this was simple.
"Travis. Is he bipolar?"
"No. But I did fear that he was. I relieved that he wasn't. I would have loved him regardless, but still, it was a relief."
"That sonofabitch!" Doris spat out, full of venom. "I divorced him in absentia and all he ever left behind for my child was his last name and his mental illness! Sharon's made bad decision after bad decision since the age of sixteen. I know that Sharon was aware when she made some of those bad decisions but I wondered how she could be diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. It wasn't in my family and I knew nothing of Ray's. Nothing. Sometimes, her behaviour was erratic. I couldn't understand my girl anymore! I grew frustrated with her. Now, we're estranged. Sharon inherited his disorder? It's not enough that he left her…" she almost started to sob, although it didn't come from a place of sadness. It was anger with a slight hint of despondency.
Julia watching this woman sob was familiar in that she had done the same most nights after Raymond's death. She cried. She screamed. She herself contemplated ending her life. It wasn't because she was selfish. It was more because Julia felt no matter she did, she couldn't do enough to be a mother. How could she continue spinning her wheels when Julia was pulled down bit by bit into quicksand? She has done it all wrong and her father's quiet shame gave her decision validation. Travis would be fine. Her mother would raise him. It would hurt her sisters to lose her. It would hurt her parents to lose their first-born but they'd move past the grief, eventually. They should have had a son.
She was ready to take the little white pills in her palm. Sleeping ones. Through swimming vision caused by new tears, Julia tried to steady her shaking hand and count the number of pills in her cupped hand. If she took enough, she'd sleep and it would stop. One…two…three…four…six…ten…twelve —
"Mama!" Travis' little voice yelled out, snapping her out of her stupor. That little voice became her parachute and his cries became her safety net. Julia's legs gave out against the bathroom sink and she shook, sending white pills clattering around her. Travis' crying had reached a new decibel but she couldn't move. Couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. Somewhere far away, she heard the soft baritone of her father, comforting her son.
"There we go, my boy. Grandfather's got you. There's my handsome grandson…"
Julia sobbed, the more she shook. The door opened and there stood her mother, straight as a rod. Her mother's eyes were swimming with tears, seeing the pills all over the floor and she swooped down in her night clothes to her. Like a child afraid of the dark, Julia continued sobbing until it made her physically hurt.
"Yulia, what have you done?" she questioned, softly in Russian. "Hmm? Surely, you wouldn't make my grandson an orphan. No, you would not do this to me. You would not do this to your father. To you sisters, It's okay. Your mother is here. Shhh... everything will be alright."
She let the warmth of her mother's arms encircle her like a security blanket and Julia wet her arms with more tears. Then when she couldn't cry anymore, she stood back up on shaky legs after her mother picked up every last pill off the floor. With shuddered breath and renewed resolve, her hands still shook as she dropped them in the toilet and flushed. Her mother helped her as Julia walked forward. She walked forward toward her son and the choice toward life. However, Doris' pain felt strange to her because it wasn't hers to witness. They were linked by and through one man but it wasn't her despair to see. Silence was all Julia could give and if she could disappear, she would.
Doris hardened again even though residual tears remained on her face but she was calm.
"I'd really like to put a face to the name."
Julia was confused. "Excuse me?"
"I would like to know what Sharon's half-brother looks like. If you don't mind."
"Oh! No," Julia shook her head. "No, not at all."
She shifted her weight to make the back pocket of her jeans accessible. Pulling out her iPhone 6S encased in dark purple, Julia scrolled through her photo stream. She smiled with a quiet laugh steeped in nostalgia. It wasn't so long ago but still, this was her favourite one. This was the last Mother's Day she had spent with Travis. Central Park when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and rosy pink.
"Here. There he is."
She walked over to Doris in her wheelchair and let the other woman take her phone. Doris stared at the screen as if trying to mentally reconcile their children living separate lives to having a link that would have them intertwined forever. She studied it silently for a few more minutes before she put the phone in her lap, slowly.
"He has Ray's eyes."
"Yes," Julia met Doris' smile with a half-smile of her own. "He certainly does."
—
fin.