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Like bursts of electric current, the brain zaps left him jolted and obtuse to his surroundings. He eyed the bottle of pills on his bedroom shelf with apprehension now, he had made his decision, and he would not be putting another one of them in his system. Fucking doctors, these pills make no one feel better. Fucking doctors, they don’t know anything at all.
Three days free of his Venlaflaxine, three days subjected to these jolting brain zaps. Starting like an aggressive shiver in the base of his spine, they shoot upwards into his skull. No end in sight. Clinically these are natural, harmless reactions from going off the pills. Physically they are painful and left him feeling drained and disconcerted. He rolls over, arm wrapped over his eyes, and with the pressure he feels slightly better. Now if he could just freeze himself, and fade into this nebulous darkness behind his eyelids... if he could just do that, he might just be okay.
But he can’t. He can only hold his breath and pretend, one interval at a time, that he is not, now. Breath by breath by breath, the cycle will continue. Giving no finale to the symphony of his darkness. Giving very little but life to dark places, breath to the monster behind his face, so inescapably breathing.
He lies still for several minutes, until a new current of anxious energy settles impatiently in his muscles - the only sign of life in what feels like dead limbs. Slowly, he rolls around once again, to stare into the ceiling. Objects may fill the immediate surroundings, but the focal point of his stare is so far off into the nothing that there is nothing. And any impulse, through a simple process of diffusion, that may dart through his mind here, will spread amongst the nothing, equally in all directions, lie suspended, then squelched. Unable to bare itself when stretched so thin.
Like a slowly growing boulder of dough on a slanted surface, once heavy enough, he will slump into motion. When the friction that sticks the dough in place is overcome by gravity's pull, this ball of dough will slosh into a heavy crawl, until once again the gravity of it’s situation becomes inadequate to maintain the motion.
Having sloshed, he’s sitting at his kitchen table. Brief sparks of unmotivated desires splash in and out of his head. Coffee. Call Robin. Eat something.
Do something.
Why bother.
Do something.
why bother
Do...
Deep breath in.
something.
And out.
whboyther
***
When she got home he was slumped over the kitchen table, breathing in short, labored bursts. Without the expression on her face changing, she dimmed the light, and started the kettle.
She settled herself at the end of the table, with her steaming black mug of coffee in one hand, with her head cocked to one side, resting in the other. Her body reacted with the usual knots inside her stomach. So tired of these knots...
Maybe, she thought, she was just never meant to be a mother. She felt knotted for passing on her damp discontentedness to this heaving boy. Certain that only through her murky womb, could such a sad person have been born. Certain in the knowledge that she added only to the sum total of sadness in the world. Certain in that fleeting fearful way, that her contribution as a mother was indeed, garbage.
Wincing away these chastising thoughts, she sips her coffee.
Even when he was much younger... even then...
***
“Mrs. Ardagh, I’m concerned about Robert. He won’t play with his peers and he’s unwilling to take part in group activities. When the other boys and girls play tag at recess he just sits on his own.”
“Oh?” Meekly. This woman would surely be thinking she was a failure as a mother.
“I was wondering if there might be anything going on at home... any reason why we never see little Robert smiling. It’s...” She paused and faltered, then picked up again, renewed, “It’s not something I haven’t seen before...”
That eery silence where something is going unsaid set in.
“Usually this behavior is exhibited,” she said carefully, after a moment, “in children that have experienced some type of abuse.” She looked at her evenly.
Bad mother. Abusive mother. Harmful. This is what she must be thinking of me.
“Oh?” And meekly again.
“Is there... anyone in his life, anyone at all that you can think of, that might be harming your son?”
Me... maybe it’s me.
“Nobody.”
“I hate to ask, but what about his father?”
The central nerve flared and blossomed instantaneously into boundless anger.
“There’s no one, got it? Nobody! No one when he arrives from school. No one when he leaves. No one when he goes to fucking sleep. No big scary man touching my son, okay? You ever think it might just be this stinking school? Ever think you’re just a bad teacher? Nobody abuses my son, Mrs. Pratt, and I’ve had more than enough of this fucking conversation!”
Those words echoed in her head as she left the smelly little classroom, and echoed still, when she plunged into the safety of her old clunker of a Honda civic. Impossible to fight the heavy tears behind her eyes...
There’s no one...
Nobody.
Deficiency as a mate.
Nobody at all.
She clenched her teeth and started the car. His tiny figure seemed to take no notice of her distress, and he shifted only to stare blankly out the window. He did look up, startled, when she bashed the steering wheel, but only for a moment, and then he looked away.
***
Bad mother... and that was grade 1. Over ten years ago.
Snapping out of her revery, she drained her mug of its last few gulps. Then looking at her boy with those weary, tired eyes, she carefully dimmed the lights to darkness, and went upstairs to sleep alone another night.
***
The following afternoon she sat at work, heavy still with bad sleep, sifting through the papers in front of her.
Dr. Morisson and his wife’s wills needed to be ready by three o’clock, when he was scheduled to come in, and she still needed to file the papers Jeffrey had left her that morning. She sighed, and opened up her word processor, finding the unfinished file.
She’d written up which charities would get what, as well as the clauses concerning Mr. Morrisson predeceasing Mrs. Morrisson, and vice-versa, but she still had to write in which items of their estate would go to which children.
She found Jeffrey’s scratchy handwriting, and began dividing up their estate, as per his instruction.
Houses. Cars. So many things to pass down... her will would be so much easier to write.
With that done she had only the clause concerning their children being either missing persons or deceased at the time their remaining parent died. The part she always left for last on these damned wills.
She knew a lot of people gave their instructions regarding this part of the will hardly a second thought. It was always breast-cancer research, or AIDS research, or Miracle foundation this or that.
People hardly seemed to give it any thought, as though any old charity could be the charity for their millions...
Oddly enough, it was the people with less that thought about it more.
And it was this section of the will that rich people tended to glance over without reading before signing, the same way they glanced over the possibility of their children dying before them, in their minds.
Careful not to make any spelling mistakes, she instructed their estate to go to the American Foundation for Pediatric Psychiatry.
Then she saved the file, hit print, and shredded the page clearly stating they wanted their money to go to the Make A Wish Foundation, for children with terminal illnesses.
Right or wrong, she thought, terminally ill children still smiled when Wayne Gretzky ruffled their hair.
***
Bad mother.
It was those two words that preoccupied her through rush hour traffic on her way home.
Bad mother.
What, exactly, did it constitute to be a bad mother anyway?
A failure to care for her child?
Well, she thought to herself, she still managed to clothe and feed him. Still managed to arrange for him to get to school, and have something to pop in the oven when he was hungry for dinner. All by herself too, she thought.
He had not eaten them in weeks, but she still prepared them every morning. Teenagers were notoriously picky eaters. That must be it.
She never refused him anything he asked for, but it seemed like so long since he’d wanted anything. No, surely he didn’t want for anything. Couldn’t be that.
She only wished she knew what to do, what to give, what to say... but only to be hit with negativity and resentment upon asking.
She wished most of all that she could be proud of toiling in that stuffy office day in and out for him. She wished so hard she could be a good mother, but she just couldn’t find the words. Or was it genetic?
Sometimes she thought bad might be like bad eggs, or bad milk. Where a bad mother could do nothing about their predisposition to sourness.
Bad eggs. She looked away quickly.
***
His head was laying on the armrest of the couch, lulled slightly to the side, drool and vomit lining his mouth and dripping onto the floor.
He had gone back on his decision not to put another pill in his body. He had, in fact, put all his pills in his body.
His stomach still felt that excruciating nausea, but it was fainter now, and the brain zaps too, had come and gone.
He used every effort left in his body to roll over when he heard the front door opening, to hide his vomit spackled face from view.
There was the usual signs of his mother being home. The radio being turned to the evening news, the whistling of the kettle. They didn’t feel so sharp and pointed today. Definitely not as invasive, this quieting and settling. He felt his muscles tense as he fought back another wave of nausea. More of that warmth and horrid billious smell from his chin and chest. His vision was getting blurry, but he was pretty sure he saw his mother come into the room.
***
She’d switched off the news when she first heard the wretching sound. Poured her hot water into her instant coffee. And there it came again. Robert?
As she began to walk towards the living room all the knots and worry started up harder and faster than ever. She did not run. She would not run. Just one step, and then another.
“Robert?” she called out. “Robert is that you?”
Another few steps and the knots had turn into rabid panic. She picks up the phone, just in case, she thought. Just in case what? Just in case…
She crossed into the living room and froze. Here, at last, the moment she had dreaded for such a long time now. Such a very long time now.
“Mom?” He coughed and sputtered, “Is that you mom?”
She felt herself nodding, still frozen. Then she went a knelt beside him.
“Robert, what did you take? Tell me what you took, okay?” She tried to coo, tried to remember back to what cooing to a small child meant. How it was done. Had she ever done that?
“I’m… pretty tired mom.”
“Shhh,” she cut in, about to ask again, What did he take? As the shock began to throb away, she became once again aware of her surroundings. Of the mass in her right hand. The phone. Ambulances, policemen, anyone.
But she did not move.
“Mom…” Weaker.
“Yes, Robert?” Quietly whispered.
“I don’t think you were a bad mom.”
She blinked several times, and then it was as though she saw her son for the first time in that moment. Just a little bit past her wild anxiety, her son had always been there waiting for her.
Bad mother. Spoiled eggs.
After wiping away the vomit on his face with her sleeve, he opened his mouth again.
“Not a bad mom… but I’m still pretty… tired, okay mom?” So quietly now.
“Okay baby,” she put her hand on his forehead, like she used to check for fevers, “Okay baby, if you're tired, you just go to sleep then.”
She hummed softly for a full ten minutes, his head very still in her lap, and then she picked up the phone, and dialed 9-1-1.
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