The Contradiction of Solitude (6 page)

I liked to sit on the bench beneath the willow tree by the river that ran through the park. I could see the soccer pitch and the tennis courts. It was a great place to watch people. Invent the stories that consumed me.

Today I had brought my green notebook and decided to write.

I wrote for many different reasons. It was a therapy. It was a personal sacrifice. It was a means to an end.

But today I wanted to write just for me.

I started by describing the trees. It seemed like a harmless place to begin.

Thin and crisp,

Victim of fall’s destruction.

Red

Yellow

Brown

Falling

Falling

Down.

Beneath my feet

I walk on the ashes

Of nature’s afterthought.

The words poured out like acid onto the paper. Burning and fluid. They hurt. But I loved the pain.

It was simple so simple. It helped but it wasn’t enough. I needed more.

Different words for different stories…

Ones that hadn’t yet been written.

The sound of a child’s laughter got my attention. I looked up to see a young dad chasing his son around the swings before swooping him up in his big, safe arms and smothering him with kisses.

My pen hovered above the paper but nothing would come.

I watched the father with his son for a while, a soft smile on my face. Forgotten. Stagnant.

“I’m sorry, my baby, baby girl.”

The voice seemed to float out of the air, settling in the grass and trees.

The whispered words of a father’s guilt.

I tore the poem out of the notebook and crumpled it into a ball. Other memories…other stories filled my mind.

“Imagine that all the stars are people. What stories would they tell?” Daddy whispered, his voice drifting in the inky darkness.

Mom was inside with Matty. He had a stomachache and cried most of the evening, ruining my daddy’s welcome home dinner. I hated when he acted like a brat.

It made me want to smack him.

Daddy had been gone for almost two weeks. Two weeks was forever for a seven-year-old girl.

Too long.

Daddy and I lay outside on a blanket. It was our special time. When he would come home and tell me the stories of the stars.

Sometimes I asked him about his fishing trips and why I could never come and he’d shake his head, never explaining why.

But then he’d tell me his stories, and I would forget to be upset about him leaving all the time. About the fact that he was staying away longer and longer.

“You start, Daddy. Your stories are better than mine,” I said, protected and comforted in the warmth of his presence.

He pointed overhead to the brightest start in the sky. “That’s Emma. She’s sad. Her parents don’t love her anymore so she decided to run away from home. She doesn’t have a mom and dad like you do. No one loves her.” I cuddled into my father’s side, confident and sure of his affection. Affection he didn’t even give to Matty.

It was mine.

Only mine.

“Why’s Emma sad?” I asked him; squinting up at the night sky as I tried to imagine the sad girl Daddy was telling me about.

“No one loves her, Layna. She has no one,” Daddy answered, his deep voice rumbling in his chest beneath my ear.

Poor Emma.

“But she has pretty eyes and a nice smile. And she trusts far too easily…” He drifted off, and I wished he’d tell me more about Emma, the sad but bright star.

He didn’t say anything again and the silence made me angry. I wanted my father’s words so seldom given. Not his quiet.

“That one’s Bubba!” I called out, maybe a little too loud.

My daddy laughed. “Tell me about Bubba,” he said.

“Bubba thinks he’s really smart but he’s not. One day, he’s walking in the woods and he gets his foot caught in a bear trap.”

Daddy squeezed my hand. “And then what happens, Layna?”

“He bleeds. A lot. And then he dies.”

My morbid imagination had always worried my teachers. Mom had been called into the school several times because of my drawings and stories. There was always blood.

Lots and lots of blood.

But it didn’t bother my father. He made me feel like my stories were perfect. That
I
was perfect.

“I love that story, Lay. It sounds like one of mine,” he said, kissing the top of my head. Daddy so rarely exhibited any physical affection so I wrapped myself up in the glow of his approval and held it close.

I smiled wide, feeling like the luckiest girl in the world to have a daddy like him.

I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to be just like my father.

His love mattered more because it hurt him so much to give it.

I couldn’t breathe.

I was sick inside.

The father and his son were gone, and I realized it was now dark.

When had that happened?

Where did the hours go? The sun had left me all alone.

My vision became fuzzy and my heart thudded painfully in my ears.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

The beast raged. The darkness invaded. The force of a thousand suppressed thoughts and emotions threatened to take me under.

I found my phone and dialed the number I knew by heart, knowing exactly what I needed.

The only thing that could pull me back from the edge that I was dangling over.

Ring, ring, ring.

The phone trilled shrilly in my ear.

The blood.

So much blood.

Scratching, groaning, aching silence.

Almost there…

“Hello?”

The air left my lungs in a violent whoosh.

I sagged to the ground, my chin pulled into my chest, the phone clutched to my ear.

I breathed. That’s all I could do.

“Hello?”

I didn’t say anything.

I just kept breathing.

“Layna,” the familiar voice said softly in my ear, recognition instant.

I wanted to smile but my face had forgotten how. I wanted to wallow in the blissful wretchedness of his voice.

“Bad day, huh?” he asked, knowing I couldn’t answer. Not right now.

But he gave me what I needed anyway. He always did.

“It’s one day at a time. That’s all we can do. But you being out there, that’s amazing. Your strength inspires me, Lay. It always has. And you’re nothing like him.” I wanted to sob and to scream.

More than anything, I wanted him to be right.

I wanted him to be wrong.

“You’re not
him,
Lay. You’re not him. You’re not him,” he chanted over and over again, giving me everything and nothing.

“I’m not him,” I finally said softly, my voice the barest breath of a whisper.

“You’re not him,” my brother promised.

I
ran my hands down the length of the smooth wood, my fingers curving and shaping. I swiped the sandpaper one final time and carefully laid down the guitar neck I had just finished.

“Fucking perfect,” I murmured, pulling a cigarette out of the pack I kept in my breast pocket and tucked it between my lips, sucking until the end was soggy. The taste of tar and nicotine sharp in my mouth.

“Wow, nice job, man,” Tate said, coming over to the workbench I had claimed as my space.

“Thanks, I just need to finish the body and I can hand it off to you,” I told him, proud of the approval in my buddy’s eyes.

I had been working as a paid luthier’s apprentice at George’s Custom Shop for over a year now. My dream involved opening my own studio and designing guitars for everyone that loved music as much as I did.

“You gonna smoke that thing or are you planning to eat it for lunch?” A pretty girl with long red hair and tits up to her chin leaned against the doorway, her lips curved in pretty little smile. I raised my eyebrows at Margie, and Tate snickered from beside me.

“Yeah, I’m comin’,” I told her, following the woman who had so eagerly gotten naked for me just last weekend.

Margie pulled a lighter out of her pocket and handed it to me. I lit my cigarette and took a drag before giving it back to her.

“Thanks,” I said, my voice tight as I breathed out a lungful of black cloud.

Margie tucked the lighter away after lighting her own cigarette, bright pink lipstick leaving a ring on the filter.

“I hear Tate’s having a party tonight. Are you going?” Margie asked, performing an awkward form of fellatio on her cigarette.

“I doubt it. I want to finish the build I’ve got going before George hands me my nuts in a sling,” I said, dropping my cigarette butt on the ground and rubbing it out with the tip of my boot.

Margie pouted her pretty lips. “I’d like you to go, Elian.”

I gave her a smile. I liked Margie. As much as I was capable of liking anyone. She was sexy and amazing in bed. I considered her a close friend.

But that was all I was willing to invest in that particular arrangement.

“Marg, our boy doesn’t do complications. Just ask his last three so-called girlfriends. Or is boink buddy a more appropriate label?” Tate cut in drolly, lighting up a stogie and sitting down on the front stoop.

Margie flushed a deep red, her mouth flapping open like a fish. “I wasn’t suggesting—” she began. And because I tried to be a nice guy, I gave her hand a quick, comforting squeeze.

“I know, Margie. I just can’t make it tonight. My head will be somewhere else,” I said, tapping my temple for emphasis.

Margie gave Tate a less than friendly glare, though the look she gave me was all female longing.

“Okay, well, if you change your mind, I’ll be there until this jackass pisses me off.” Tate chuckled and held his hands up in mock surrender.

“This jackass is getting loaded. If the night goes as planned, I’ll be passed out in the bathtub by ten.”

“Good to have plans,” I chuckled, shaking my head.

Margie went inside without another word and I kicked Tate in the foot. “Man, give her a break. You really can be a dickhead.”