Flashpoint: Wayward Sons

Chapter 3

                   Clark had learned that calm was a temporary thing. It hovered for brief moments, lingering until something happened and it shattered. It was the story of his life. He remembered the calm like he would a dream. Short, blissful and fleeting. Normal to him was the chaos. He was so used to the tension in his house. The fear that radiated off of his mother, even when she smiled at him that soft, sweet smile that told him nothing was wrong. She was a terrible liar, and she knew it. But he always nodded back at her, pretending to believe her silent assurances. And they stayed together, floating numbly through the day until she'd get the phone call or the text message or his father would just walk through the door and look at her like the whole day had been a hallucination, and it would all seem to freeze. Time would slow to a stop, like the world was holding its breath. And when his mother exhaled a shaky sigh and relaxed into his father's arms, it was over for a moment. The peace swept through the house, strange and still. And then they would go to bed, and the night turned to morning. They would wake up to make breakfast, mother chattering mindlessly and father smiling a tentative, reserved kind of smile that spoke of how little he actually slept. And it was all so easy and simple that it didn't seem real.

            And it never lasted.

            Sometimes, it was weeks, rarely months, often days. But it always ended sooner or later. It was a clip on the news or an ambiguous phone call. Sometimes it was the tardiness, the unanticipated absence. His mother would freeze, breath catching. Then the tension was back, sharp and defined and familiar. The waiting was exhausting. The forced activity was too animatronic and mundane to distract from how thick the air felt. It pressed down around them, heavy and grating. But it was the way things were. Their house was suspended in time, the weight of the world crushing it. His mother cooked and cleaned and Clark just watched and helped where he could. He went to school and came home and did his work and helped his mom and filled the hours with meaningless movement until he couldn't take it anymore. That was when the music came.

            When Clark found music, suddenly, the tension was measured, precise strokes. The anxiety thrumming through his limbs into his fingers worked to define every chord, quick and smooth. The waiting was a melody, every second a note. He taught himself to drown everything else out. Eventually, his frayed nerves were lost in the symphony. He facilitated his own version of serenity, and it lasted as long as he kept playing. Of course, he couldn't play forever.

            Yes, calm was a temporary thing.

            It had been calm since the ride along. The Lane household was quiet, tentatively relaxed (if that was even the right word to describe it). Clark thought that it was awkward, the peculiar sort of stillness. It left him unsure what to say or do. These days marked a new beginning, his father slowly recovering and Clark working to get past his anger. Neither of them had ever been good with words and it was strange for both of them. They were trying. Clark was trying. 

            Walking on eggshells around his father had been one thing. The calm usually came with him, following him when he walked through the door, but this time, the eye of the storm never came. The storm simply raged on and his father didn't bring the relief, he made it worse. He'd changed, become one with the chaos. The heaviness just got heavier and his father was sinking and they were all sinking with him. No one knew what to do about it, Clark included, but he was used to the unease in his house so he'd at least understood his options. He could get angry about the way his father was acting, he could avoid confrontation or make it worse, lash out like he wanted to. He could ignore it, pretend like they always did. He could fake a smile and nod back at his mother and it would all be so painfully fake that it would be almost laughable.

            The longer it all lasted, the more he leaned toward the anger. His father's job did this. It made his life like this. All the pretending and the forced smiles. The barely suppressed panic and crippling worry came from that damned job and he hated it. He hated his father for sticking with it, for not leaving when it tore him apart. For letting it drag him down and for taking them all with him. So he'd bitten back when his father snapped, even though he'd known it was pointless and petty. He'd made it worse because if no one made any move to make things better, then what did he have to lose?