Warning: mild references to child abuse. Warnings also for alcohol abuse and language.
This is getting to be a really weird story. The timeline jumps all over the place. It's meant to be random snapshots of his life. Mostly the painful, bittersweet moments and how they shaped Chase.
2. When she stopped being his mum (also known as The Silent Years)
She stopped being his Mum long before she died. That is, she stopped taking care of him and he had to take care of her.
"He left us. He fucking left us, Robbie. Just you and me now." She throws up on the carpet. "Get me some gin and tonic, Robbie."
He doesn't know what he can do to make it okay. He tries pleading with her. "Mum, come on. You've had enough." He guides her to the bathroom and holds her limp hair back as she retches again into the porcelain bowl.
"Be a good boy Robbie." She groans and holds her hand out. "Get me a drink."
Robert feels defeated. Then he goes and gets her a cup of water, holding her hand.
"I want a fucking drink! Not fucking water!" She rages. She throws the glass awkwardly into the wall of the bathroom. It bounces weirdly, spilling water but doesn't shatter. She grabs bottles of shampoo and conditioner to hurl them at the shower wall. She's raging at him. He stands there wide-eyed and afraid. He can't stop her but he just can't leave her either so he retreats to his mind. Robbie thinks absently that its like watching a bad movie except that it's not a movie, so the mirror doesn't shatter but everything is on the floor. It's still a mess. "FUCK!" She screams before starting to cry.
Robert snaps out of his mental refuge. He focuses on her pain even though he's hurting too. He sits down next to her and tries to rub her back. "Its ok Mum, I'll clean it up."
He always cleaned up after her. Her vomit, her broken things, the half-made meals. He found the cleaning soothing; a ritual that he could fall into. It kept him busy. He always organized everything so he would know where to find it. It was a way that he could fix things. If only a little.
She couldn't remember hitting him. She knows she wouldn't do that. But the finger shaped bruises on her son's left cheek incriminates her.
"Robbie, come here."
So he comes, obediently. She's sorry that she's changed him. He comes to her dragging his feet, his head down as if he were afraid. Afraid that she'd hit him again? He's taller than she remembers. She feels him flinch then slowly relax into the embrace she offers. He doesn't fit into her lap anymore.
"I'm so sorry Robbie. Forgive me, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you." Then she's crying and he's comforting her even though she should be comforting him. She sobs and tells him that she's sorry that she's not being a good mother. He protests but they both know it's the truth. She vows that she won't drink ever again, smashing the bottles in the cellar. She's in a sober rage and somehow it's almost like she was drunk.
As always he says, "Its ok Mum, I'll clean it up."
The disappointment hurt more than his ribs. Sometimes he wished that she wouldn't promise him so sincerely that she'd quit drinking while in a stupor. When she turned back to the bottle, it hurt him. He couldn't pull her away from it and he felt like it was a personal failure. He tells himself he can't remember what she said to make him feel that way. Chase holds tightly to the belief that his mother wouldn't say things like that to him. In his memories her lips move but he's never hears the words. He doesn't know now if he's just repressed it or imagined it.
He hid the bruises. He didn't want people to ask about it. She couldn't control herself. It wasn't her fault. If people found out the truth, they'd take him away from her and then what could he do to take care of her? She was all that he had left. If he felt hurt in any way, he had to hide it. He couldn't let anyone suspect what was going on. He became a master at masking himself. Now years on, even now when she's passed away, he can't unlock the chains he's put on himself.
"Tell me about your family," Katie asked as she lay next to him. They were at her house again. He never bought anyone back to where he lived. She ran her hand on his chest, giggling slightly as her hands reached his chest hair. "About yourself then Rowan."
If she had suspicions that it was his first time, Katie didn't say. She didn't even know his real name. He doesn't think Katie is her real name though. He doesn't know what possessed him to use his middle name…his father's name. He knows she's sleeping with him because she sleeps with everyone. He's sleeping with her because she asked him to. He suspects, not for the first time, that he might have a masochistic streak in him somewhere.
He puts his face in her neck and drowns in the scent of her perfume. He kisses her. Later she will taste the lingering hint of a farewell and an apology in that kiss. She remembers the reverent way he touched her – like she was special. She never had the chance to ask about his family again.
He never actively whored himself. He did have sex, fuck, make love to (whatever you want to call it) a few that were called that though (who's counting?). He didn't mind them leaving. He expected them to leave him. No expectations, no disappointments. It became his motto. He told himself he wasn't afraid of a relationship. It wasn't just meaningless sex. So what if he had sex with all the wrong people (who makes that crap up anyway?). He understood what it was like to be unwanted. The thing is that he really believes her when she tells her that she loves him. Even if she leaves him, in that moment of euphoria and post orgasmic bliss – he lies there and soaks up those words of affection that he aches to hear. He takes a deep breath and begins to clean up the room. It reminds him that he's not completely useless. If he can make women happy, then maybe he had a chance at making his Mum happy. Maybe.
Somewhere between his father leaving them and his mother drowning her sorrows in the drink (or drowning in alcohol), his mother stopped being his mum. She was an alcoholic. She surrounded herself with her woes and shut herself in the bottle which was to be her prison. Chase didn't want to be her warden but sometimes he felt like he was. Other times, he was in the prison with her. Sometimes when he really wanted to understand his mother, he couldn't, and he felt like a visitor.
Chase eventually lost count of the amount of times his mother asked him to forgive her. He knows that she can't remember hurting him. He knows that she's sorry. He knows that she won't change but it gives him a lie that he can comfort himself with even for that little while. It reminds him that she needs him.
"Why are you calling me now?" Robert says sullenly. He's chewing on a pen to distract himself from his father's voice. It feels like a betrayal of his mother to be speaking to him. He knows she doesn't like it and she refuses to take Rowan's call. Robert wished that he could do that, just refuse but he knows he can't. He hasn't heard from his father and if anything he wants to know… "Why?"
"I just wanted to see how you were."
"If you wanted to see how I was you'd be here!" Robert accused angrily. "Why did you leave? You left without saying anything and now…now…you have the fucking guts to call?" Robert needs someone to be angry at so he throws everything he can. He needs to break something so he won't feel so broken. He needs someone else to hurt for a change.
"You wouldn't understand-"
"And you do?" Robert says bitterly. There is so much he wants to say but if he says it, it would mean being a traitor to his mother. He can't do that to her. He can't lie there and just take it all of the time, so this time, he's standing his ground.
"Look, I'll send some money-"
"I don't want your fucking money! I don't even want to talk to you!" He knows he sounds desperate but this is his lifeline. He can't bring himself to say that he needs his father. He needs him to take care of his mother. What he really is saying is come back.
Rowan doesn't tell his son that he's still paying for the house. Rowan doesn't tell him that when he pays the bills with Christina's card that it's his money too. That when she drinks, it comes up on his credit. Rowan doesn't tell him that he suspects what's happening. That he would rather pay for her alcohol so she won't take it out on him than to deal with the problem. He's used to paying for her. He'd rather not have to say anything to her again. Rowan doesn't tell him that he's seen security tapes of his own son staggering outside in the middle of the night holding what suspiciously looks like bottles of liquor. Instead, he sighs heavily on the phone. "How about when things settle down at work, I'll pop in to see you. I know you blame me, son-"
Robert feels disappointment fill him. He still isn't as important as work. Never had been. "Yes, I do." He says coldly. He needs to shut his father out of his life. He's tired of broken promises and he doesn't think he could take another disappointment.
A loud sigh. "I don't want to argue with you." A pause. "You could still live with me. You know where to find me."
Already it feels like there's hope and he knows that it's a false hope. "How could you say that? I can't just leave her." The unspoken plea, can't you help her?
"I can't help her if she doesn't want to help herself. You've got to let her go son."
"I'm not just going to give up on her like you." He spit out the last word. "Don't call me that. Just don't call me." Robert hung up on him.
He meant to shut his father out of his life to make him feel what he had felt. A taste of his own medicine so to speak. Robert hadn't thought that it would be so permanent. Robert couldn't swallow his pride to call his father again. He remembered picking up the phone again, listening to the dial tone silently hoping that his father would call back again. Wondering if his father even called at all. Maybe it was all a bad dream. That he would come back and fix everything. He knows that it was stupid. That wouldn't happen. So he had to fix things. It was up to Robert. He was sixteen, going on thirty.
"She wasn't your responsibility." (Rowan)
Chase knows intellectually it wasn't his fault that his father left her…left them, it couldn't be because he didn't do anything right? Not anything wrong anyway. Emotionally though, the lingering shame still haunted him whenever someone asked him about his father or whenever he had to fill out those camp forms (what's the point in contacting his father if he was in an accident? Is that what it would take for him to care?). He felt guilty every single time his mother cried herself to sleep, for every bottle she drank. He couldn't blame her because that would make him a hypocrite. He blamed himself too. She had her drink. He turned to religion for his penance.
The bruises didn't show her the cutting words she's said that she'd never remember, the words that he would never forget. He knows that they're lurking there inside him, like dormant demons.