The Love Of His Life

#96 XENIA

2259 words

The Love of His Life

She shuddered as she looked into a room, the guest room, she supposed, although she had known it by many other names since the home’s construction in 1993. "That room up there", the "empty room", "his old room", "Dad’s room", until finally, "the guest room".

It was just a small room probably 12 foot by ten, with a regular size closet that had sliding wooden doors, the cheap kind that always had to be reset on the track above. It was bigger than a jail cell, but for one of the family’s members, it had become a jail, where they had done time as long, and as lonely, as in a prison’s confines.

The paint was once a light beige, egg shell, an off white dirty color. The carpet was an off color of brown that looked dirty even when freshly shampooed too. Looking back to the day the couple moved in with their two boys, she realized the house and it’s guest room had been dirty even when they moved in. Not from soil or food, but from the parents themselves, from their sickness of addiction and abuse. They were dirty, and made everything around them soiled, even the two perfect little boys.

There was a bunch of furniture and useless items like old crutches, and a single online skate, blocking her way into the room. She could see that she couldn't just clear a pathway, she would have to take each item out one by one and put it in some kind of organization. Maybe by who it belonged to, or if it was still useful. She pulled out a twin mattress, the online skate, and the crutch. Then she dragged the larger items down the landing to the floor below.

She realized as she piled them by the back door that these belonged to the youngest child.  She pictured herself watching him spending hours constructing two ramps and dragging the bikes and lawnmower between the two ramps. She remembered his striped shirt, the crooked buttons, one off from his manner of buttoning without matching the bottoms of the shirt tails. In her memory she heard the little boy’s voice, “Watch me, Watch me,” the sound of the skates building momentum and speed and the sound they made switching from the asphalt to the wooden ramp. She was entranced by his body sailing through the air, he was  bird… then the sound of his body hitting the lawnmower and the bike, finally rolling to a stop a few feet away. “OOOWWWWWEEE! He screamed, then “DADDY!” Her teeth gritted and and the muscles of her jaw clenched then released.

“He isn’t here baby,” she told the sobbing boy, her voice soft and gentle, disguising the anger in her jowls, “Your Daddy isn’t here right now.” She picked up his tiny body and carried him into the house.

There were at least three TV’s waiting for her at the guest room, queued in the order of their demise. The first was just a small video tv that had been the baby’s, little Sam Cook. As she picked up the small box, an ancient peanut butter and jelly sandwich fell to the floor. It had turned from white to green to brown to powdery dirt, held together by the still red raspberry jam. “Ewww.” and then she laughed. She remembered Sam thought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were interchangeable with vhs tapes. She pondered for a moment what that movie would be like, put the TV in the pile and went back for the next one. 

This one was a heavy Sony, not much bigger than Sam's, but three times as heavy. The screen was cracked in a thousand lines, like tiny lightning bolts trying to ground themselves on the edge of the screen. She had not moved it more than an inch when she heard Dan’s voice, at the same time he had hurled his trophy into the screen. “I hate you. I hate you,” he was sobbing, repeating the phrase over and over. She stood up, and grabbed the packing tape off her basket of cleaning supplies and made an x over the cracked screen to keep the glass from releasing from the box. She put the tape down, and wiped her eyes with her sleeve, as if her tears were sweat. She dragged the box down to join its companions of the last ten years.

The last TV was a newer flat screen, but it’s glass was completely gone and the plug had been cut from the wire. It had been the oldest boys years ago, Dan had given it to Little Robbie for his birthday. Little Robbie had just turned 16 and probably only watched it once or twice before he had destroyed it in a meth ed out frenzy. She shook her head in disbelief and sadness at how he had changed. At 34, he was a man, but his drug addiction had amplified to heroin, which he dealt freely to even Sam, and his father, with no remorse. “I don’t give a f+++ “ he had exclaimed.

“Quit bugging me about it.” he had snapped at her when she had asked about his drug dealing. She added the TV to the others sitting on a corner of the huge tarp.

She took down an end table and a dresser with no drawers, as well as a huge lamp with six individual lights, meant to hover over the back of a sectional couch, to make for easy reading during TV time. Then there were clothes. Tons of clothes, all worn out, outgrown and forgotten. Favorites and unwelcome, unwanted,  brand new, shirts and pants from the cheap racks.

Rebecca had bagged up three huge black leaf bags with the musty garments, when she came to her own clothes, those left before the divorce. There was nothing stylish or pretty, mostly just rags she had worn when working, but that wasn’t what she was thinking about. She was suddenly lost in a memory of a beautiful day, right before she had left. It was early autumn and she had just come home from cleaning a house in one of these scruffy pairs of pants and stained shirts.

“Do you know how much I love you,” He asked, grabbing her by the waist in the kitchen, “I love you this much.” He held up his hands and spread them apart as far as he could. “You are the love of my life.” Then he left, telling her he would be right back. Of course he didn't come back, that night or the next. When he did, he was drunk. 

He roared into the driveway, and got out of the truck, slamming the door to shut it and slamming the door against the wall, the stopper going through the drywall. “Rebecca!, where the f+++ are you, bitch,” his voice gravelly, the words slurring, with undisguised venom dripping from her name. “Rebecca!” She was doing the dishes at the sink, not turning to face him as he stormed into the kitchen. It didn't matter that she wasn’t trying to confront him, he grabbed her hair in one hand, and twisted her around to face him. “Who was here, bitch?” He screamed into her face, spit droplets landing on her nose, her eye. “You had a man here, didn’t you?” The first punch was to her ribs, the spot immediately turned black and blue, with an ugly purple center. “Didn't you?” He screamed again. This time it was a roundhouse kick to her thigh, which immediately gave away, and she fell to the floor. “Didn’t You” another punch, and another. He pulled her to her feet by her hair. “When I catch you, i am going to kill you .”

She continued bagging up clothes and garbage and put them next to the mattress and TV’s on the tarp. She had tears rolling down her face for about fifteen minutes. Unable to stop the flow, she went downstairs and grabbed a soda from the fridge, popping its top, and finishing it in three or four gulps. She wiped the tears from her eyes again, eyeing the progress she had made downstairs with a critical eye. She had spent the previous two days scrubbing the walls, floors and counters, sweeping endlessly, little piles of  pine needles and bright orange syringe tops and crumpled foils dusted brown with the snail trails left from smoking heroin on the little square with a tube from an ink pen. 

It was clean, but the plastic protectors around the light switches were missing pieces, or completely gone. It was the same with the baseboards, and the counters. There were holes that were patched, holes left unfilled, the doors were bruised with punches, and kicks, not kicked all the way through, just more like scars, like the injuries they all had.

For a brief minute, Rebecca sobbed and wept for their once beautiful home. It was as destroyed as their relationships were. She had done her best to clean, and repair, but there had been too much ignored, and too much, just too much, of everything. She hated all of this, and composed herself.

After two more hours, she was done with the guest room. It’s walls and floors were scrubbed and wiped, vacuumed and shampooed until she recognized the walls as resembling their former state. In this room there was only one cracked outlet, and the light switch was still intact. The light on the ceiling was bare, it's cover gone for many years. She rehung the closet doors, snapping them into their gliding track and opening them, open and closed. She felt pretty good about her work, and decided she would sleep in there for the rest of her stay.

Another memory slipped in, the last time she had stayed in this room, The boy’s father had begged her to stay, “You are the love of my life,” he had said again and again, petting her like a golden retriever might get petted, “Good girl, sit, Stay.” She had thought to herself. He had said that and then promptly fell into another drug induced nod, neither conscious or unconscious, drooling on himself. He sickened her. She had dressed in the middle of the night, heading out in the darkness with her small backpack, and a heavy feeling, she knew might never leave her heart.

“Mom” then “ Mom,” first one voice and then another. Her men were back. The two of them came in with as much noise as a herd of elephants, “Mom where are you?” Sam had a different tone than Little Robbie. Little Robbie sounded irritated. They clunked up the stairs to her, and she heard echoes of their childhood. 

“What have you done!” asked Little Robbie, as if she had destroyed something precious. “What have you done?” he repeated in a far angrier tone. “When we told you to come, that didn’t mean clean Dad’s house!” His words were sizzling her ears, they burnt her skin. “I told you not to touch any of his stuff.” He shook his head “This was his house, not yours, what were you doing? You couldn’t just be here for us, could you?” Rebecca looked at his flashing eyes and heard the hate in his voice, her oldest son hated her.

“It had to be done, there was nothing in there, just broken stuff and old rags.” She tried to justify her trespass. “Besides you guys all left, and there wasn’t any music, or TV, and I got bored. I am trying to help you!" She let her tears roll down her cheeks.

“I love you, I was only trying to help.” she said very softly. “I'm sorry.”

Little Robbie was clenching his fists and his jaw, “Dad loved you, you were the love of his life," Little Robbie leaned over, his nose almost touched hers, ”He loved you, and you cheated on him, now you're in here, throwing things away like you own the place.” He spat.

Sam was staring at them, his mouth slightly open, his body  weaving back and forth in the too familiar dance of a junkie. 

“Get out, Get out right now!” he growled like his dad, she thought. Little Robbie would hit her next, just like his dad used to. She heard it in his words, felt it in her bones.

“She thought ever so briefly about what to do. "So much for the guest room," she thought, and mumbled to herself, and ran downstairs, grabbing her small backpack and heading out into the warm June evening.

“You should apologize,” Sam yelled after her, “Right now mom!”

She kept walking, thinking about what it meant to be the love of someone’s life, have three kids, waste twenty years of her life and not be  able to stay in the guestroom of the house she had once owned. Funny how she went from being the love of someone’s life to the shame of another’s.  

“I’m sad for you.” She thought.” I will never stay in that guestroom, or even go to that house again.”

Rebecca had walked into that hallway, the one with the full guest room just a few days before as a new widow, the only surviving parent of three sons. Then tonight, she was stripped of all of it. She walked down the dark driveway, a stranger to her own children. Her heart hurt. But even worse was her eyes, as the two headlights shined brightly into her eyes, temporarily blinding her.