We All Fall Down

Chapter 58

Roach

I pay for him to have the best care possible. It's the least I can do after what he's gone through. I check on him regularly. Sometimes he knows where he is and what he's done, but more often than not, we talk about Victoria and how they're living together and getting engaged soon. I cry every time we have those calls. John tried so hard not to become his parents, but here he is. It's mind blowing to see one person's entire life be filled with so much pain and sorrow. I never told Mickey about Rose, not that it mattered once he watched John murder his own mother with his bare hands. We both feel an obligation to him. We like to think if this were one of us, he'd do the same. Although, maybe not.  John was so angry at me in the end. Raged blinded him, but I guess if I'd seen my best friend with my mom like that, I'd be pretty pissed too. But Patrice was dealing with her own shit, too. She had to come back to a town that treated her like dirt, to a friend that hated her, a dead husband...she needed someone. I wanted to talk to him about it, eventually. I wanted to wait for the right time. Now, it doesn't look like I will ever get the chance, but he doesn't seem to remember my part in all this.

It was bizarre to see her lying on the ground like a rag doll tossed on the floor. Her eyes bloodshot from being strangled. Her beautiful, long neck positioned in an unnatural way. I remember kissing that neck. Feeling her skin goosebump under my lips. That seemed so long ago. Like it happened in another universe. Her hair  was knotted around her head. I shivered with want to smooth it back, make her look nice before anyone else saw her. She deserved better, the woman I loved. Looking down at her I felt a great sadness, not for myself but for her. I don't think anyone had ever seen the deepest parts of Patrice like I had. I don't even think Rick knew her that intimately. She could have been so much more than this, but because of her unwillingness to help herself, she's been reduced to a chalk outline on the sidewalk of a funeral home. In that moment, staring down at her body, I imagined my life had I gone off with her. Would she have left me anyway? Would this be me instead? Would I have still straightened my life out? Everyone has choices to make in life. I'm a firm believer that everything is connected and that each small decision that you make is a part of a much bigger picture that is revealed to you as you grow and mature. Here was one of my much larger and more profound moments. I feel lucky.

I try not to ever return to our hometown anymore. It brings back too many memories that I don't want to relive. I don't go back to my family's lakehouse either. If I have learned anything from John, it's to avoid any and all situations where negativity exists. As if returning to a place where something bad happened would only cause more bad things to happen. Whether it exists in our minds or not, I know it to be true. The human mind is a powerful thing. Even when it is held by weak people. Maybe even especially.

I have the local florist tend to Patrice's gravesite. Only half of her ashes were buried, I carry the rest with me in a porcelain vase and scatter a little in every new country or city I visit. I offered them to Ben, but he refused. He thought I would find more interesting things to do with it than he would. I like to think that traveling with me would make her happy and that wherever she is, she's looking down and smiling at all the places we are visiting together. Even the most broken people deserve to be respected and acknowledged. I pay for Rick's gravesite to be maintained as well. The half of her ashes that were buried lay side by side with him, which I'm sure he would have wanted, even though she didn't. The stone remains with only his information, but I created a smaller marker for hers, just for me. Maybe in Rick's version of heaven, they found each other again, and in the forms that best fit one another. They would live out their days as happy as he hoped they'd have been in life. There are so many unknowns about death and the afterlife. It brings me more comfort to think that when we die, we become ultimately healed. Nobody is sad, nobody is sick and nobody is lost.

I'm afraid, however that this is the only way John will ever find peace. That's the main reason I can't talk to him too often and why I haven't had the balls to go visit. I can't look at him and see what could have very easily been me. I can't look at a person who I considered my brother and know he's gone. I deal with that guilt every single day, but I have faith that one day, he will come out of this. I just hope that when he does, he will be able to move on with his life without the fear that this will happen again. I've learned a lot from him or maybe I make different choices than I used to because of what happened to him. I don't think I'll ever get married.  I don't want anyone to have control over my emotions and actions. It's best that people learn to keep a safe distance from others because you never know what's going on in that woman's head who sits next to you on the bus or the man who takes your ticket at the movie theater. Everyone has a story and I make it a point to pay attention and never make the same mistake twice.