Shattered

Mom

The hailstorm came early as the newscaster predicted. She could hear them as she woke up, an incessant tapping against the window. She reached out beside her and found the space empty. Shuffling out of bed, she made her way out of the room and down the steps in her usual clambering stomping walk. In the kitchen, she gazed out the sliding door as the pitter-patter of hail intensified.

Suddenly a large stone smashed into the window before her, she remained frozen. She blinked- stunned, as her eyes followed a bit of ice running along the glass. Taking a step back, she saw the pane again; three cracks forming three separate pieces.

I store at the mess of dishes piled upon the sink. He had loved a midnight snack, Udon noodles with dumplings loaded with soy sauce and hot peppers. He would do the dishes right after, he didn't think I noticed but I did. Whenever he was home, there were never any dishes waiting for me in the morning.

I twist the tap and put on the gloves, the water cold and running limply along my the gloves. I’m trying not to but I can’t help it, every object lies around this house like a land mine. I try to go about my day and not think of it, and boom. It explodes and it all comes back to me. I’m struck.

The distance was difficult, I had begged him to reconsider at first. All that way up north, four hours away… it was too much, simply too far. I had told him over and over again, but you just can’t seem to tell kids anything. All those mornings I would wake up and knock on his door, tell him to get ready and dressed for school. And for what? All those mornings I would wake up and knock on his door, searching for signs of life.

I first tried to get used to it. I would wake up a bit earlier and get out of the house immediately. Go down to the pool, do some laps and soak in the hot tub. And for a while, I found a new way to start my day. And a new place for my affection with all those retirees, all with their own sons and daughters away from home.

But still they could not escape it, every morning discussion tinged with some pathetic activity to fill up the time, to fill the space their absence had created. Waiting and filling, fighting time when there wouldn’t be much more at our age. Waiting for even a sliver of news to repeat and rehash, over and over, followed by memories, an endless supply of memories tying into every scrap of news. Oh when he was younger, oh but when she was a child… Eighteen years of caring for them, feeding them, clothing them, nursing their wounds…

And he would return for the holidays and for the summer, spend the first week doing nothing but catch up on sleep and laze around the house. The empty room I would awake to find was suddenly buzzing with life again. His bed always in disarray, sheets and blankets tossed all around, his desk littered with ash even as I begged him not to smoke in his room, and his books; stacked up on the shelf, beside the shelf, beside his bed, they’d be everywhere.

He was messy like that, careless in that way young people usually are. The Christmases would be spent dragging him along to one family function to another, he would disappear for the weekends but always tried to fit in a family dinner. Then he’d be gone again, back to school.

The summers would be different. After the first week, he would lay about the house in his underwear until- under my urging, he would set out and finally find a job. He would still go out during the weekend, when he had the money. His roster of friends were wide and varied, though he seemed to have split away from the familiar faces of his high school years. I never asked and I never saw them again.

And there would be those mornings, when his door would be locked and I couldn’t even slip in and check on him. Sometimes as I passed the front door on the way to the kitchen there would a foreign pair of shoes. Sometimes a girls, sometimes a guys. I never asked.

The water became hot against my hands and I found myself frozen, not quite sure how to continue. The sense of being struck deepening… I just can’t stop thinking of how he must have been those last few days. Alone, all that way up north. Unable to reach out for some sense of comfort, for some sense of familiarity and comfort. Comfort only a mother can give.

Dad

I had finished the last of the arrangements with a few taps on the keyboard. The insurance application sent, the death certificate faxed, the casket ordered, the church booked.

I decided on St. Mary Immaculate though Our Lady of Peace would have been more fitting. Our Lady of Peace was where was where we used to go. It was the scene of his first Communion and his Confirmation, scenes captured still on the wall in his old bedroom. All fake smiles in his smock as his mother took her fifth picture in a row at age thirteen. His eyes half-closed in that garish yellow jacket, bright in the protruding sun at age eight.

I had missed it of course, there was the quarterly report during his first Communion and that damn merger during his Confirmation. That damn merger which sunk the company in the end anyways.

I guess Our Lady of Peace would’ve been better in the end but they were already booked; a wedding, a baptism, then a first Communion ceremony the following day. Another generation of greasy faced kids squirming and fidgeting their way through the sacraments, as the priest would call and the congregants responded.

I remember it still, all those Sunday mornings. All those mornings I thought had faded out during the worst of his teenage days. I would wake up, trudge down the hall, down the steps for some breakfast and there he would be. All dressed up; shirt buttoned and tucked in, tie knotted up; sitting on the couch swinging his feet with the news on, waiting. Waiting for me to wake up and take him to church.

It would be during the car ride that we would talk, sometimes about what he saw on the news; of what I thought about Jean Chretien or the Reform Party, and sometimes he would ask about passages. He was never empty of questions, always wondering and looking up at me for answers. On and on with the different accounts of what Jesus said about divorce in Matthew vs Luke, or that one passage in John. He never got that passage. John 12:25, “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it life eternal.” He would repeat it often and to be honest, I’ve never been too sure what it meant either.

And it all ended so suddenly, one morning I woke up and went down the stairs and he wasn’t there. I knocked on his door and he didn’t answer. I found him still asleep, wrapped under the blankets. Giving him a slight tap, I whispered: “time to go to church,” but he just groaned and rolled over. And just like that in one morning it was over, gone in a flash, over in an insidiously effortless fashion.

We never spoke of it of course and we left it as it was. But still the Sunday mornings marched on, now marked by deserted breakfast scenes, silent car rides, and an emptiness seated beside me in the pews.

When the university applications arrived, I was excited. Jude- his older brother, was still going through his own troubles and it was pretty obvious that him going to university was not in the foreseeable future. Still all the time and money we saved turned out not to be wasted because he had treated it so much more differently. Not a death sentence or the logical next step after high school, but an opportunity. I would come home from work and find him there on the couch again, still watching the news. Gone was the sullen moody boy in the throes of puberty and it had seemed he had return. The wide eyed boy, full of questions. Now simply taller and lankier but still full of questions.

Questions about post-secondary life, about programs at selected schools, about future careers; life. And I still tried to answer them, as best I could as if I really did have all the answers.

I even went a little overboard at work. Always sly, attempting to be idly; asking about the best school for this and that, the best city for this and that, all begging for that question and answer: “yes, my son’s been accepted and we’re shopping around for schools.” I had raised a son, one ready and willing to chase his dreams, to study and move up. That’s what a father does. All those years I scrimped and saved, all those sacrifices I bore in bringing my family to this country to begin with. In a way I would imagine him riding the TTC with me, in business school; full of questions about whether capital gains taxes qualify if you lost money in the market, or harmonized tax policy vs GST and PST separate. But he didn’t choose a school close to home.

He chose the best program at the best school, four hours away. I still remember the final car ride, a silent drive devoid of his usual questions. It was the third time I was driving him back up there, soon he would be done and he’d be back home. The ride had become monotonous, almost routine yet still as long. After we finished unpacking his things, we were left with even fewer things to say. I turned to leave, full of awkward gazes but something felt different this time. I placed my hand on his shoulder and lacking anything to say, I looked into his eyes and nodded. He nodded back.

It was the beginning of his third year and I knew, I knew that he would soon be finished and just as before he would return. That in someway, just as he had before, he would come back. But he never got that chance. God simply had a different plan for him, I guess.

Jude/Brother

The traffic was light and I was making good time, getting off the next exit I pulled into the Tim Hortons drive-through. I ordered my usual green tea and as I pulled out I spotted a Starbucks across the street.

He had loved Starbucks, always drinking the same venti soy latte something. I never quite understood it, seemed kind of faggy really. But he would order it almost compulsively, every day I would drive him to the new one on Elgin Mills. Practically everyday when I drove him to work during the summer break. The drink cost over five bucks, “a rich man’s drink,” I’d say.

Things were better then of course, he seemed quieter. Less crazy with his sentences that would never end, full of rambling crazy ideas. And he seemed even quieter when he came back for Christmas.

It had been a long shift, the type where no matter how much you sleep during the day the overnight would just drag on and on. I’m exhausted, this heavy sinking feeling down in my bones. It would be easier in the summer of course with the sun waiting for you in the morning but in the dead of February, it’s the same pitch black spitting out more snow.

They gave me the rest of the week off. I didn’t say anything but somehow the news had spread. Probably Uncle Alan, my supervisor for the site. I guess it would’ve only been a matter of time.

With work and everything, I’ve barely had time to think about it. At first, I didn’t believe it. Just my crazy stupid little brother up to his crazy stupid shit again. Working up mom and dad like that, what a bastard. And they’d let him get away with it, no matter how he’d screw up they’d just jump in and fix it for him. Always ready to humour him and support him. Ready to pay for his tuition and his apartment and cover whatever else he always supposedly needed.

I called Jamie and Bryan after they had confirmed the body. I figured nothing would quiet that stupid howling and sobbing. They said the usual stuff, the stories we all heard about him in high school and replayed our memories of that chubby smelly kid we would crash in on whenever mom and dad left town for a trip.

He was always weird, head buried in a book, talking about stuff nobody cared about. I was sick of him then and I’m really sick of him now. And it was hard not to make fun of him with that shaved head mom would force him to have. That shaved head and pudgy cheeks, that big head like Zordon from the Power Rangers. I can still laugh about that now.

But when he came home for Christmas, I knew things couldn’t continue as they had before. He came back kind of… exhausted. But we had to talk, someone had to talk to him and mom and dad were up to their usual bullshit, always coddling him. “In any other economy,” I told him. “In any other economy, we could keep this up. You being away at school and all. But times are tough and dad’s a banker and mom’s a real estate agent, we can’t keep this up. You can’t keep living the way you are.”

“Ok, Ok,” he said sounding more tired than before. “I’ll get a job or something.”

“That’s not good enough. We’re losing money every month… dad’s thinking of getting a loan to cover it, and that’s only for now. Dad put most of his money in the stock market and with it being so bad right now, he can’t just take it out, you know what I mean? So to get that money out, we’re going to have to wait till things get better, so they don’t sell at a lost.”

He just nodded like he stopped listening. You could always tell he was being difficult when he would just nod and not say anything. He always had something to say, he was a last word freak. It used to piss me off so much when he would accuse me of being that way.

“Listen, I’m not saying you should drop out or something. I’m just saying that right now we can’t afford it. Can’t you just graduate with the credits you have? You know graduate with something else. We just can‘t afford to send you to school right now.”

“You don’t understand,” he said in this low voice. “This is my dream, I know times are tough but times are only tough right now. This is the rest of my life we’re talking about.”

“I do understand but this is right now. Welcome to right now. Things’ll eventually get better but we just can’t afford it right now.” I shook my head angrily. Like only his life was being affected by this, he was always so fucking selfish. “Listen, mom hasn’t sold a house in months and the way things are going with the banks, we’re lucky if dad gets his bonus. And do you think dad’s really going to get that raise? Dad’s sixty-two, he wants to retire soon. He could’ve retired sooner but no, you wanted to go to school. He can’t keep going on like this, you know how he is. He can’t say no to you, he can’t say no to you even when you call him with your hand out for laundry or something.”

He let out one of his little pissant sighs and said, “I just have one more year. Just one more, I really don’t see the difference if-”

“No, no you don’t. You’re all the way over there as we all work our asses off to put you to school. We don’t have a year. And you can graduate now with the credits you have, just for something else. I don’t see why you’re fighting this.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“You think I want to work construction? I do it because I have to. Yeah, I never went to university or graduated high school. I do what I have to. And you’re going to do this for us.

What do you think has been going on with us for past year? We’ve been behind on the bills, month and after month. I’ve been giving up my entire pay-check. You don’t think I want to be saving up for my own car or house? You have to make a sacrifice, we all are.”

“Oh, so that’s what this is about.” He spat coldly.

“No, it’s not. It’s about dad wanting to retire and not being able to do it, all so he can keeping supporting you. Paying your way through everything.”

“Is it? I’ve talked to dad, he hasn’t said a word about this to me. He just wants me to graduate, that’s all. Graduate on time, graduate studying what I want. Following my dream. Not to settle for some cheap ass three year English Literature degree, but with what I want, what I want to do with the rest of my life!” He was yelling now.

“It’s not about you anymore!” I yelled back. “I’ve been handing over my entire pay-check to help them out, to help them pay for you. I’m twenty-six, you think I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life? You think I want to stay living in my parents basement?”

He gave up and went quiet again, but I continued. I needed to make him understand; it wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair. I went off on him on everything. On how he was bankrupting the family because of his own selfishness, on working dad to death just so he can chase his dream, on making me delay my own life just to support him. I had never been more angry with him.

And all he could say was something about how I sounded like Tom from the Glass Menagerie and how he didn’t know what was worst. That I never read it or that I played the part so well.

I told him that life wasn’t a story, that life doesn’t work out the way it does in all those books he reads. That things just don’t end all neat and tidy.

“Oh and how would you know?” He said.

I gave up then. I was pissed off as hell and doing all I could not to slam the brakes and turn the wheel so he’d bash his head against the window. I tried to speak to him about it a few more times before he went back to school and we just had the same fight over and over again. There’s just no getting through to him sometimes. No matter what, he’d still always see me as some bully.

All through his Christmas break, he just got quieter and quieter. Staring off into space, even ignoring his books. The only time I saw him ever break out of it was during Uncle Alan’s Christmas party. He had disappeared with Andrea- our oldest cousin, as her little sister Samantha was still spitting up her dinner. I went up the steps to find her and caught their conversation.

“And it’s not fair, is it Andrea?”-pause- “It’s not fair that suddenly you have to work that much harder just to get them to notice you. And why should you? You never asked for a little sister. But she’s here now and she’s just that, you’re little sister. You have to take care of her, because you’re her older sister. And little sisters need their older sisters to look out for them. To help them out with things because you’re older and bigger and smarter, and Sam’s going to need that…”

I walked in on them and as usual, we went on playing our games with Andrea. The usual competition over who could make her laugh and stuff.

But thinking about it now, I don’t even really know what he was talking about. He was always in his own little world, way too different from mine. And when I really think about it, I don’t even know what I would say and what difference it would make. Except to say, how could you be so fucking stupid? I hate him so much right now and he’s not even here to hear me say it. But what else could I have said, when he was all that way up there. What could I have said as he knotted up the power adaptor to his laptop and wrapped it around his neck. What could I have said when he looked down over the balcony, and jumped.

THE END