Cigarette Smoke and Failure

Cigarette Smoke and Failure

I pull the vacuum across the spot, knowing it will never come clean.  A drop of sweat falls into my left eye, burning and blurring.  I blink and push, and the vacuum screams.  My thoughts whirl, and I watch the dirt in the canister turn red as it spins around and around and around. 

“You're worthless!” she had said, screeching in that way she had, and a drop of spittle flew from her pinched lips as her nostrils flared, a panicked horse, flecked with sweat and unreasonableness. 

“Mom, I...”

“Shut Up!  God, how I hate you!”  Her words spun from her, took on a life of their own and punched into my soul.  She turned then and fled, and the door crashed and I was alone.

Later, much later, she woke me with kind words slurred through an alcoholic cloud.  “I'm sorry, baby.  Momma's sorry.  You just made me mad.”  She laid her head down, and her hair reeked of cigarette smoke and failure.  Her breathing settled to a soft roar and she slept.  If I were capable, I might remember how many times this happened, but I don't.  It just happened and happened and happened.

I met Shelly the first day of High School.  She was small, beaten and pretty, and had just moved to town.  Unlike me, she had both mother and father to make her life unbearable, and the light, raised scars on her wrist were worn like a survivor's badge, open for all to see yet perhaps permanently closed.  We seemed drawn together; me the moon to her unfathomably larger sun, my presence and and problems dwarfed by hers.

“If you love me, you'll make him stop.” she said.  Her tears fell and seemed unrehearsed, and the mucus that ran from her nose as she hiccuped another sob spoke of her genuine anguish.

“Shelly, I...”

“Don't say it!”  She pulled her head back, dragging her arm towards her face as she inhaled through her cigarette.  The smell of the smoke, as it always did, both drew and nauseated me.  “I knew you didn't really love me.”  She pushed me away, an ember falling to burn a hole in my jeans while her words burnt my heart.  “You probably just want to fuck me again!”

I approached her father that night, drunk as much on my own self importance and the desire to prove my love as the Jack Daniels I had poured into my half finished can of Pepsi.  “You're a monster!” I screamed, and I would surely have said more – had planned to in my head, where all things are better –  but his fist, larger and faster than it had the right to be, shattered my plans.

When Shelly visited me in the hospital, she used words to say what the new bruise on her face surely implied; I was a failure.

After school, we married and I went to work security at the mall.  Shelly worked from part-time, her alternating fits of depression and rage allowed.  When she quit, there were always reasons; well thought out, well rehearsed, and both paranoid and delusional.  The manager of the Subway was a lesbian and wanted to have sex with her.  The staff at Friendly's was jealous of the tips she brought in and made up stories to get her fired.  She did all the work while others got all the credit.  On and on, and the decision to leave were always so well reasoned that you would have to be an asshole to question them.  Apparently, I was.

“The fucking dyke wanted to eat me, and you expect me to stay?!  Maybe I should have let her!  You'd like that too, wouldn't you, you fucking fagot!  God, I hate you.”

I fought back with calm, told myself that it was her father talking, told myself that she was a good person stuck in an awful place, told myself that she didn't deserve the bad in her life, told myself that if I were only a little better, she would be as well.  I was good at telling myself this; I had a lifetime of practice.  The calmer I became, the more vulgar her arguments, and still I stayed.  I took all that I could, until I couldn't.

Every day had become the same, and I almost grew to accept it.  I was a failure.  I didn't make enough money.  I didn't help enough around the house.  I didn't wash the dishes right, fold the laundry correctly or even run the vacuum the way I should.  That was what did it, really.  I couldn't vacuum right, never mind that she didn't work and I shouldn't have to clean instead of her.

“Jesus Christ, you can't even fucking vacuum right, you missed this whole area.  I guess you want me to do it, so I can hurt my back worse!  You'd like that, wouldn't you?  Me more crippled so I can't even leave you?”  The tears started then, as if on cue, and I lost it.  I turned off the vacuum, went to the garage, brought back a hammer and started hitting.  Again, and again, and again.

I push the vacuum forward again, but the blood won't lift.  I turn off the vacuum, and am not surprised when I hear her voice come from it, laughing in that bitter way that she had.  “I told you you weren't doing it right.  See the mess?  Just like your life.  Boo hoo, my Mommy was mean and drunk, now I'm a failure.  Pity me, poor Tom.  Now I can't even vacuum right.  But you probably like living like this, like a slob, with dust all over.  See it on the  bookshelf?”  The vacuum keeps talking, and I push it – her – into the closet.  I pick up the hammer, but stop first at the phone.  It rings and rings and rings, but eventually she answers.

“Hello, Mom.”