"Jesus Christ!" I yell this to myself, admittedly because I am alone, and not because I actually believe I'm the supposed redeemer of humanity reincarnated. For the past six minutes, I've been trying to fix the air conditioner of the car I'm driving, without lots of positive results - that is, none. But much to my dismay and despair, this vehicle is so old, I'm actually starting to wonder if the model came out when Diplodocuses merrily roamed the Earth.
And even though I know this is just a joke, and a rather hyperbolic one, calling it a relic wouldn't be that far from the sad truth.
"C'mon now, seriously, what is wrong with this shit?" I keep whining to myself, with obvious desperation in my voice, while I wipe some sweat off my forehead with one hand, and restrict myself from punching the already broken regulator with the other.
I want to clear a couple of things up: I don't usually talk to myself as if I'm a whole other person, calling out Jesuses in the midst of such an unbearable summer heat, but my main resolution at the moment involves distracting myself with pretty much any little thing I can; even if that little thing is fixing unfixable air conditioners.
There's a reason behind this, and it's because I don't want to idiotically stop to think things over. In fact, the main proof that I shouldn't use my head too much lies in this whole decision being based on not thinking: it comes from the brilliant minds of my mother and myself, so you can imagine.
And, truth be told, I'm still sort of dubious of what's the final purpose behind frying my ass off in an old (some might say ancient) car without air conditioning for like two full hours. Now that I've been on the road for over 45 minutes, I'm starting to anxiously think that maybe driving back home and heartedly pretending this whole thing never happened isn't such an unappealing idea.
And see? Now I'm actually thinking. My plan (if you could call it that) is beginning to sink miserably, and it hasn't even started yet. I try to shake these thoughts off. I decide turning on the radio and rolling down the window is the right thing to do. So I do; music fills my ears, and fresh air fills the car, and it feels so good that my mind starts to drift again, and so I helplessly think a bit more anyway.
I start to think about the sequence of events that has brought me up to this point, and I think about how it all started this particular morning, too, with that innocent "How's my favorite son?" from my mother, who uttered it with annoying cheerfulness, as if she had plenty of more children to like any less.
But in reality, if you want to look even more back in time, it all started with the arrival of summer break, because Ross left, and Monica left, and the entire student population of New York left, and so I figured I had to leave, too, even if I'd rather stay. Out of a depressing lack of options, I ended up in my mother's house, where the only interesting thing I've found out is that Doris (you know, the chunky maid that poked me awake that one day) is not really named Doris, and that her actual, real name is Bridget, which, no offense to her, I didn't find fitting at all.
"Hey, genius, perhaps this wasn't such a good idea," I honestly thought the second I went through the front door, and all I could picture was Monica lifting up frames and asking me about them, and Monica clinging to me inside the kidney-shaped swimming pool, and Monica sneaking out my bedroom's window, and Monica getting physical with no other than myself on the bed of my infancy, and oh boy, it's been some hellishly long 23 days.
Plus, things haven't been particularly easy since I was blessed with the revelation that the weird feeling located in that exact place between my chest and my stomach was actually love (a weird feeling that grazed both the pleasant and the unpleasant, by the way), and I think maybe it has something to do with it hitting me a little too late. I'm not especially proud of my sobbing fest in the swings, either, but the great part of that depressing episode is that, even if it didn't make me feel that much better, I do feel like a heavy load has been lifted off my shoulders, so there's that.
Now, I've always assumed that, when you're in a situation like mine (that is, fresh out of a long-term relationship), you weep and mourn for the appropriate amount of time, until you wake up one day, and you miraculously start to feel a little better. Then you wake up the next, and hey, this mysterious magic keeps working, and you're even better that day. And then, thank God, you wake up the next month, and you're just perfectly fine.
"Monica?" I should've asked myself by now. "Who the hell is that woman?"
But the sick thing is, I don't. I've come to terms with the fact that everything happens much slower to me than it does to the rest of humanity, because I seem to be a weird specimen of a human being. I wake up every day, and for the shortest fraction of a second, I genuinely believe nothing's happened, and I genuinely believe she's going to call me any moment, desperate to tell me something I should not find interesting at all, but that I unexpectedly do.
I still miss her, and I miss her quite a lot, actually. It's kind of pathetic, really - it's as if time won't be able to heal me, and as if I've completely forgotten how to live without her occupying my thoughts. It's kind of pathetic to the point that, if I'm completely honest, I'd rather not dwell on it too much during the ride.
So, let's go back to what I was talking about before: my mother's house, and what it might've meant for my sanity - a really big, kind of solitary place, filled with lots of time to think, sleep, and eat, and chatty maids who have ill-suited names. I should point out that, even though my mother was supposed to be here even before I arrived, she showed up an extra 20 days late, carrying the excellent news that she was staying for just a week. Oh, my dear mother and her incredible surprises. Then on the third day of her stay, she asked how her favorite son was, and she did it for the first time in only God knows how much.
"I'm okay," I distractedly said. One of my resolutions for this summer is to start living like a somewhat normal person again, and so I was up on time to actually have breakfast whenever you are supposed to have breakfast. (I've been informed this is in the morning.) I was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, finishing off a bowl of cereals, and she collapsed onto the stool across from me, carrying an empty mug in her hands.
"Yeah? And how was school?" she eagerly asked, this sudden interest in my life feeling quite a little suspicious.
"It was good," I said, pulling my most nonchalant face and taking a spoonful of cereals into my mouth. I was lying, of course, since my finals had gone sort of terribly bad. I considered telling the truth for a brief, nonsensical moment, but then, I honestly found no good in telling her something like that, so I simply didn't.
"Anything interesting you might want to tell me?" she pushed with a mischievous smile, pouring herself a cup of coffee. I shook my head. "No? Not even a lucky lady then?" she insisted some more, and then added as if this wasn't a well-known fact: "You know how much I love the juicy stuff."
I looked at her across the counter for a second, and I wondered again what good could come out of telling her anything about me, my life, or my disastrous relationships, and seriously, I just found nothing. "Um, not really," I shrugged after a beat, and I must be quite an atrocious liar, because she hummed at my response, not really convinced.
"So, ha," she started, taking a sip of coffee, that sarcastic, stupid, and sharp ha resonating in my ears, "your life's okay, college was good, and yet I've been here for a couple of days and the only thing you've done is mope around. It doesn't sound that good and that okay to me."
"Well, ha, that's me. It's not my fault you gave birth to a moper," I shot back, picking at the remaining food in my bowl. I know I seemed to be irremediably mad at Nora most of the time, and I also know that her sole and principal crime was doing nothing at all. But then again, that's not something you should do to your child, since they tend to grow up a little resentful.
"You don't know what you're talking about, sweetie. I don't give birth to mopers," she dismissed my whole rebuttal with a wave of her hand, and then quickly got back on track, "Anyhow, Chandler, come on! The interesting thing here, and you know it, is: was she pretty?"
Please, oh, please. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep pretending my bowl was the most fascinating item in the world since it was now empty, and so I felt forced to look at her, with her eyes fixed on mine, and her eyebrows totally up, and her face ostensibly expectant. What did I do in a past life to deserve this, I wondered.
"Oh, dear Jesus, honey," she continued then, gasping with derision and squeezing my hand with her own across the counter top. "Was she... a she?"
"Yes, of course she was a she," I kind of grumbled at her, rolling my eyes. Insinuate I'm a homosexual, and you'll easily get any answers from me, apparently. I probably shouldn't have felt so offended, but I'd like to point out that it was far too early in the morning for me to undividedly endure my mother.
"Well, and was she nice?" she insisted, gulping down more coffee.
I cleared my throat, lowering my head, the spoon clinking against the empty bowl. "Yeah, sure, she was nice."
"Okay," she nodded, pondering over her next question, because there surely had to be one. "And did she love you?"
And alright, that didn't felt quite like a question; it felt more like a bomb. I probably should've just left it at that, I should've thought again about what good could come out of talking to her about this, and I simply should've gone back to my room with my now full stomach, and just spent the entire day thinking or whatever, like the big dweller I know I am. Yet, strangely, when people bore holes through me with their eyes, I feel compelled to look away and be sincere, because it's that easy to intimidate me. It was barely perceptible, but I slowly bobbed my head.
"Oh," she said then, sounding more serious. "And did you love her?"
"Well, see, now-" I started and stopped with a shrug, drawing in a long breath and then letting it hiss out slowly. "Yes."
"Gee, then why aren't you two together?" she asked, and I suddenly realized what I was doing. Oh, God, quit while you still can, I told myself. I know I didn't want a lot of things to happen, but I definitely didn't want to be on the receiving end of all the insulting adjectives she'd throw at me, no doubt, right after finding out I was the miserable ruiner that had ruined the best thing that's ever happened to me, because I behaved, put plainly, like a dumbass.
"Ah, just because your son's a dumbass," I said, getting up and going to the sink, wanting to rinse the empty bowl, but mainly wanting to distract myself with something. "Let's just leave it at that, 'kay?"
"Chandler! Did you cheat on her?" she asked, her eyes wide and her mouth open. "Please, tell me I didn't raise a cheater!"
"No, of course not!" I turned around, forgetting all about my bowl and my beliefs, and foolishly blurting: "I just wouldn't tell her I loved her, is all."
Understandably so, I felt like the stupidest person in the world. It's like, if you want something from me, all you need to do is call me out on something I haven't done, or something I'm actually not. I squeezed my eyes shut out of regret, but then again, it's not like Nora's reaction helped my cause, either. "For God's sake, really?" she asked, on the verge of hysterical laughter. The whole scene was kind of weird, but I reluctantly nodded anyway. "Oh, God, how unoriginal!" she exclaimed, laughing some more. "And here I was, thinking that your story could help me find some inspiration for the plot of my next book, or something like that!"
Was this really, actually happening? It must've been happening, because the disbelief that coated my face was very real. "Well, forgive me for not taking originality into account, Mom," I said with sarcasm, drying my hands with a towel. "My mistake, won't happen again, eh?"
"No, but I mean, it's so easy, really. Just go to her and make things right, you dummy!" she easily said, with that daft laugh of hers, and I suddenly found that those simple words annoyed me a great deal. I suppose this is because I could say a few good things about my mother, but I was one hundred percent sure that one of them wasn't that she was ideally placed to set herself as a relationship coach.
So, I simply stared at her for a second, my mouth agape, and I started thinking about her - my uncaring, abandoning mother, with her pompous hair and her pretentious makeup, even this early in the morning, easily giving advice on love as if she didn't proudly hold the trophy for most failed relationships in the shortest span of time ever witnessed, and I got rapidly filled with something that very well resembled contempt.
Yeah, that's right: contempt.
"Alright, that's kinda rich," I snapped, letting out an ironic laugh. "No offense, Mom, you're good with the fictional people and all, but your love life's even worse than mine, and that's saying something."
"So what?" she quickly retorted, not at all fazed by my words, tipping her mug with her fingers. "Does that mean I shouldn't try to give you good advice?"
I shrugged, jumping to sit on the kitchen counter. "Probably, yeah."
"Look, let's be real here for a second, Chandler," she started, leaving her stool vacant and making her way towards me.
"Yeah, come on, let's be real," I challenged her as she went across the room, right before she stopped right in front of where I was sitting.
"I'll admit it: I am as a crappy at love as I am at motherhood, but listen, I've had enough failed relationships to know how hard it is to find someone who is just right for you, y'know?" she said, looking deeply into my eyes again and, God, I wondered how she did that. "Just let me ask you something, and then I'll leave you all alone if you want, okay?"
I hesitated at first, but then I nodded.
"Did you feel she was right for you?"
"Yeah," I said without even thinking, regretting straight away having caved to her wily ways so fast and easily, but since you already know I'm painfully weak, it's very likely this doesn't come off as surprising. "I mean, yeah. Totally."
"Well then, why don't you just go tell her how sorry you are, and that you love her, of course you do, and that if she took you back, you'd be the happiest little guy in the whole, wide world? I mean, it's quite simple, if you really think about it," she said. The 'little guy' comment kind of stung, but I decided to let it slide, mostly for the conversation's purposes.
"But I dunno. I mean, she's pissed at me big time, she probably doesn't even wanna see me," I retorted, squirming in my seat, because I didn't know if this was true, but the fact that it was a very real possibility made me want to repeat my embarrassing episode in the swings. This must've been really obvious to the outside world, because Nora took my face in her hands and made me look at her.
"Well, then if that happens, or if, y'know, you just screw up..." she trailed of with a sheepish smile, acknowledging what was most likely to happen, "just remember that tomorrow's always another day, until there's not another tomorrow, honey."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is kind of a really trite thing to say, but at the same time it felt completely real, and so it could easily be the wisest thing my mom has ever said to anyone, and she was saying it to me.
"But at least you'll know you did everything you could, y'know? I mean, I don't want my son regretting things he could've done differently. That's the worst thing that could happen to anyone," she finished at last, and God forbid me from thinking this ever again, but I got the feeling that she was totally right.
"You think?" I asked, trying to get rid of my last bit of doubtfulness.
"I know," she said, nodding confidently.
And then, I simply stared at her for a second, my mouth agape, and I started thinking about her for the second time that morning - my darling, eye-opener mother, with her interesting hairstyle and her perfectly preserved makeup, no matter how early in the morning, easily giving advice on love as if she didn't proudly hold the trophy for most failed relationships in the shortest span of time ever witnessed, and I got rapidly filled with something that very well resembled affection.
Yeah, that's right: affection.
I mean, she gave love a try, and when she didn't succeed, she gave it another, and then another, and you have to give her something for trying so much without ever losing hope. The amazing thing of all this is that she loved, and failed, and then she loved again. I thought to myself that that's got to be some kind of privilege or virtue you are blessed with when you are born, and God, that's when it hit me, much to my mortification, that I actually envied my mother a whole lot. Okay, that felt really spooky.
"Holy fucking shit," I swore, bolting up from the kitchen counter, pulling my hands to my head, and wildly pacing around. "You're totally right. I mean, what the fuck was I thinking? I'm such a jackass, what the hell?!"
"Oh, Chandler!" Nora frowned, seemingly horrified, but I knew that, deep down, she was just plain amused. "And you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"As a matter of fact, yeah, I do," I said, going with my instincts and pressing my lips to her forehead. She giggled because of this; believe it or not, I'd never heard my mother giggle before in my life. Such a freaky morning. "You, oh you... You, are a freaking genius! Christ! I gotta, I mean, I don't even know what I'm gonna..." I stuttered, patting some nonexistent pockets in my t-shirt and pajama pants, and then making my way towards the door with a shake of my head. "Yeah, I gotta go see her, I think."
"Wait, you're leaving now?" she asked, still standing in the middle of the room.
"Well, that was the idea," I said, coming to a stop and turning around. "I think I should, yeah," I stole a glance her way then, and I frowned. "Why?"
"Oh, I don't know, it's nothing," she gave me a tight-lipped smile, waving her hand dismissively. "Go, go."
"No, c'mon, tell me," I tried to push a little.
"Well, uh, it's just..." she trailed off first, before breaking into a stammering mess later, "I'd actually thought, maybe, I don't know, that we could grab some lunch together later, or something. I mean, today." And my mom was actually trying, poor thing. I'd never seen her out of words before - this definitely was a day where a lot of weird firsts were taking place.
I also thought then that I've always been quite the bitter child, always wanting to rub all the bad things in, and I realized that things could've been so much worse, to the point that I briefly wondered if I actually had it good while growing up. But then I stopped, because, okay, let's not get too carried away.
But anyway, I leaned against the door frame all the same, smiling and acting all casual, and then I said, "Sure, Mom, we can have lunch. I mean, I guess I'll try to make an idiot of myself in front of Monica later."
"Monica, huh?" she said, smiling. "I love it!"
And that's the story of how I ended up all alone for the next couple of hours in this ancient car (because, of course, my mother wasn't willing to lend me her sports car), thinking about this morning when I shouldn't be thinking at all, but of course after having had lunch with her, which became an experience full of sort of peculiar conversations, albeit surprisingly entertaining.
Now, I've never been to Long Island before, so while I didn't even know how much it would take a normal, scared traveller like me to get there, the fear of getting lost is what's been worrying me the whole way over. And now that I'm finally here, I am horrified to find out that it is literally five times bigger than I expected.
So, I keep looking down every two seconds at the crumpled, almost torn apart piece of paper in my hand, as if I'm expecting the words written in it to suddenly come to life and start giving me some directions I will actually understand. Ross sloppily wrote his parents' address in this note back when we first became friends, just in case I ever wanted to visit him there, and I'm sure he couldn't have imagined, not even in a thousand years, that it would come so in handy when trying to turn up unannounced in an effort to get his little sister back.
I kinda love life's wicked sense of humour, to be honest.
But anyway, I feel like things started to get somewhat lonely a while back, because the music blasting from the car radio is no longer there. Stupid, I know, but I'll explain: I thought it would keep me good company at first, but then some guy started to tearfully sing things like, "I fell in love with the world in you," and then a Beatles song invaded my senses right after, and even though I should point out that it wasn't even a song about love, and it was just a song about having sex on a road or something like that, I sharply turned the radio off anyway, because I had this strange feeling that it was personally mocking me, even if I was perfectly aware that it was a really absurd feeling to have.
And as I'm thinking this, right after utter silence's been the only thing filling the air inside the car for some time, but right before I die of absolute loneliness or sunstroke, their house comes into view at last. Oh, boy. I think I've seen it in photographs enough times to know how it looks like, and when I take a peek at the address, my suspicions are confirmed. I'm finally here, and I'm not lonely anymore, because now I'm just queasily nervous. I don't think I'm ready to face the possible and terrifying music of rejection, because I'm positive I was born unready in general, and I don't think that's fixable.
I take a deep breath that stretches itself for as long as it takes me to slowly pull into the curb. But taking deep breaths doesn't seem to work - I'm still nervous, though I'm actually petrified. So, after having brought the car to a gentle halt, I swiftly kill the engine, then methodically roll up the window, and then I just stay there, sitting upright with my hands locked white around the steering wheel, taking rather ragged breaths, and staring straight ahead through the windscreen with a blank expression on my face.
I know deep inside of me that, looking back in retrospect, I will admit I must've looked a little suspicious.
But I'm sorry, I can't help it - it's just occurred to me that I have not thought this through at all. So maybe that's why, as I'm going through this weird trance inside the car, I spend some time thinking about how things could go once I've gotten out of this bizarre situation. I mean, I want to come across as a respectful individual, particularly because Monica's father is a person I don't actually know, but that greatly intimidates me.
And so I start to think about how things could go once I've actually knocked on the door. Not too good, according to my sketchy imagination - I am stuck within the sick idea that Monica's father is going to come to the door. And God, most of these scenarios end terribly bad, and the ones that don't, pretty much involve him making a fist around my shirt and furiously shaking me until I lose all my willingness to live.
I seriously don't know how long I've been like this, but hey, luckily or not, I suddenly return to earth by force, because something seems to be happening, and I think it's happening in real life.
I find out I've been pulled out of my fictitious stream of endless possibilities because someone is repeatedly knocking on the window of my car. I jolt in my seat when the noise becomes painfully clear to me, and I also hear a gasp - turns out it comes from me, too. At the same time this all happens, my heart lurches forward, and my hands unlock from the wheel so they can reflexively clasp to my chest.
When I've confirmed my heart is not going to come out of my mouth, I decide to look up, but since the sun is blocking my view, I can only discern a blurry silhouette. I see another hand, I hear another knock. I squint my eyes a bit, because for some reason getting out of the car hasn't even crossed my mind, but then nothing really happens, and squinting doesn't seem to work very well.
Yet that is until, oh, dear God, I find out the silhouette is not a figment of my imagination, and that it actually has a voice, and that the voice is unexpectedly asking, "Chandler?" and it sounds kind of weird to my ears, like the voice is coming from inside a box, but then I realize I'm the one who's inside the freaking box, and then the voice continues and says, "That you?" and so I assume that the silhouette belongs to someone who knows me well enough to recognize me while I'm going through an almost hallucinatory stupor inside a car.
At least it seems like I will spare myself the horror of knocking on the front door.
A/N: I've been debating right until this moment whether I should switch to present time narrative, or just forget all about it and not change anything. I'm not so sure, but I hope I made the right decision. Andbutso I think this makes sense, so anyway.
Oh, and a couple of quick things: "Tomorrow's another day until there's not another tomorrow," is a quote taken from David Milch, and David Milch is a genius capable of making poetry out of curse words. I present Deadwood and John From Cincinnati as proof. "I fell in love with the world in you," is the chorus of Noah and The Whale's 'Hold My Hand As I'm Lowered'. I listen to a lot of music while giving writing a try, but the only band that never fails to inspire me is this one. Seriously, I love them so much, it's sort of ridiculous - you should definitely check them out, they're awesome. Oh, and, and, and The Beatles song is ' Why Don't We Do It In The Road', obviously.
And anyway, just one more chapter to go. Hah, I'm kinda sad this is ending. Lost of very sincere thanks for leaving me those amazing (and I mean AMAZING) reviews. It's very likely most of you are being way too good to me, although I'm not really complaining :)!
