what happened in a small town

pàrt seventeen

Confrontations don’t make you better; you don’t feel better afterward, and it will not win anything after.

Some confrontations only bring loss.
She said his name as she saw him, his angry, chaotic appearance, his raging gaze towards her, his eyes surrounded by blackness as if he had not slept for days, his lips trembling as if he was fighting with his tongue so that it would not explode in her face, strangely enough, despite that, she could not help but notice his attractiveness in his chaos, the faded jeans, and the wrinkled white polo classic shirt, his messy hair falling over his eyes.
A new version different from the steady-groomed Harry.

She sighed, struggling between her conflicting emotions, between surprise, fear, and attraction, as if she was ready to fall into his arms, ready and willing for him to kidnap her now like any bad man who doesn’t care about anything or anyone other than the girl he wants.

She shook her head in rejection of her train of thought, whispering a question as a result of the long stare. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to see you.”
She closed her eyes in exhaustion, unable to take a step back, she repeated his name with all the confusion that was raging inside her. “Oh my God.”
He closed his lips In a sarcastic gesture indicating surprise, then opened them and said in a tone that mixed anger with love. “Good, you still remember me.”

She couldn’t find the words to respond with, she knew how angry he was with her or on her, most likely both, despite the tense atmosphere that increased her tension and his looks that worried her, but the voices inside her calmed down, for a moment she achieved the peaceful silence that she had requested two weeks ago, she sighed silently and her eyes refused to respond to her request to stay away from him, but rather to turn away from seeing him, looking at his details as if she was missing him, not that she actually missed him intensely, but his eyes were filled with anger that had consumed the love inside him, only the anger that was scattered between his words.

“It’s actually very good that you still remember my existence, that you’re still here in town, that you haven’t disappeared and gone off to some other place I don’t know of without a message or an address or anything again.”
She clenched her fists in painful silence, closing her eyes as she whispered. “I didn’t go anywhere and I didn’t think about leaving.”

Her words came out quickly without thinking in a failed attempt to curb his anger, but he came closer, filling her eyes until it became impossible to see anything else. She saw nothing but the volcano of honey erupting in his eyes. She had never imagined that his eyes could ever erupt and boil with this amount of excitement and turmoil, perhaps because he had never been angry with her or abused her, perhaps he feared for her feelings more than she could comprehend, perhaps because the evil of the patient when angry is violent. She swallowed her breath inside her chest and stifled it as she followed the movement of his lips and his voice that roared in the quiet street, shouting without caring about anything, not caring who would attract him with his voice and strangely she liked it because he was finally letting his feelings free, not holding them back because this is what he was supposed to do in order to remain in the image his mother had drawn for him.

“That’s because you work here!” He pointed to the building behind her, but she didn’t turn around; her eyes didn’t move from him, he added with angry irritation. “Because there’s a challenge and competition here because when that idiot Harry heard your request, he ran like a damned idiot without caring about the woman who was willing to give him her soul to ask her to give you the job because he couldn't not care about you.”
Her face wrinkled in stifled sobs, shaking her head weakly in refusal. “No, you’re not an idiot, don’t say such things.”

He pulled her arm forcefully, pulling her closer to him. His anger flared and his eyes flared to the point where she felt they would overflow. She felt the heat of his anger engulfing her, and his loud, roaring tone became even more intense.

“Yes, I am an idiot. I am an idiot. You treat him like a doll. When you need him, you talk to him and he comes running to you, leaving everything behind. When you get bored, leave him without a word. Do you know how many times I talked to you in the past few days? Do you know how many messages I sent on all the chat apps, like a teenage boy chasing a girl who doesn’t care about him? Do you know how many meetings I canceled? How much work I didn’t care about, and how many people I insulted, get angry at, and perhaps lose? Have you seen how rude and difficult I have become, who can’t stand anyone talking? Do you see the signs of exhaustion on my face? Does it show how many hours I didn’t sleep and how many cigarettes I smoked? Do you see how much I have become a man I don’t know? Answer me, Marla.”

Her heart almost stopped from the adrenaline rushing through her body, her eyes filled with tears without daring to fall, Harry’s angry voice and his new tone in her ears made her shiver as if she were on a stormy night in summer clothes, his pressure on her arm hurt her, reminding her of how many times she was brutally violent from the other one before, how weak and bad she was and how unbearable life was, but something inside her insisted that Harry was not like Dean at all, even though her mind at that moment had lost its distinction, but there was something that made her see him, that he was Harry who could never hurt her, he shouted at her again so she tried to speak but the words escaped so she tried again while she saw behind Harry some passersby stopping to watch the situation from afar, she did not care and saw the madness of his looks, she tried to get the words out of her mouth a lot and Harry’s grip on her tightened until she succeeded in getting them out shakily and broken. “Please stop; you are not an idiot or a doll; I am really sorry, please; I have never looked at you as an idiot.”

The sentences she said were repetitive and meaningless, making him tighten his grip on her as if he was letting out something he could no longer suppress in her, hurting her because he was in pain because of her sudden distance that controlled his mood and he was unable to do anything, and this feeling, in particular, made him more angry and shouted. “Yes, I am a stupid doll, you made me an idiot who stands at your door every day just to see you, while you avoid meeting him, you made me an idiot who waits here for hours to see you, to make sure that you are here, I couldn’t stop myself from doing that, you made me a disheveled idiot who knocks on your door to ask about you, you made me an idiot in front of your aunt and I ask about you because you don’t answer my calls, and all this because you no longer want the doll, or do you like me being an idiot in front of you? Or do you like the role of the bad girl who plays with the man she knows loves her?”

Her tears welled up and her arm hurt so much from the way he dug his fingers into her flesh, and Harry’s words about her hurt even more.
How did he think of all this?
How did this interpretation come to his mind?

Did he see her as a bad girl who plays with him, considers him the doll that she kicks whenever she wants, and brings whenever she wants, people increasing and getting closer and fear gnaws at her, and she doesn’t know a way to stop his blind anger, raging like an animal that won’t stop until he hurts everyone thinking that this will make him better, she begged him with tears flowing and a trembling tone.
“Please, Harry… people are crowding around us, and it’s bad.”

She cried just like a child, so he was a little shocked; seeing her cry shook something inside him, but his anger made him like a blind man in the dark of night as if his lack of vision wasn’t enough. He looked around to see a group of people staring at them, looking at each other as if they were weaving stories about them, so he returned with his angry eyes to focus on her eyes that were covered with a layer of glass by tears, he whispered angrily that he suppressed with a determination that exhausted him.
“Come with me to the car.”

He tightened his grip on her arm more as if he was sending her part of his pain, pulling her behind him. The pain tore her apart, although she felt him loosen his grip after a moment, so her voice came out weak.
“Maybe I should go alone.”
“no.”

A firm, sharp refusal, his voice rose again; she looked around at the people and the car that had stopped as well; watching the scene, she looked back at him, trying to make him leave her, but there was no softness in his eyes, she whispered. “This is the car you asked for.”

He lowered his eyelashes in anger, pulling her towards the parked black car, lowering his head slightly, and shouting at the staring driver. “She won’t go with you.”

The driver woke up from his curiosity. She tried to object, but he was already pulling her behind him.
“For your own sake, don’t argue with me now.”

He whispered to her as he headed towards his car parked on a side street behind the building. She was determined and didn’t know how. She walked with him willingly. He brought her in and sat her in the seat next to the driver. The next moment, he was driving away from the street, which had a scene that lasted for minutes, and it lost his calm.
~~

Love is a strange, incomprehensible, illogical thing.

She sat catching her breath like a fish out of water and just came back, catching her breath and crying while he focused on driving, afraid to look at him, and the fragments of his anger that reached her were enough, she focused her eyes on her feet and tried, all of which failed, to stop her sobs resulting from her silent crying so as not to provoke his anger, her sobs grew louder and she wiped her tears with the back of her hands like a child who did not know what to do, suddenly she felt something placed on her feet, she looked closely between her thick layer of tears to find a box of tissues placed in front of her, she glanced sideways to find him not looking at her, only focusing on driving, she pulled one and wiped her nose with it then pulled another to wipe her face, she glanced sideways at Harry while she was busy wiping her eyes and her little red nose like a child who had been scolded by her father. 

Did he hurt her?
He shook his head at the question, still angry about everything, still angry at her and wanting to scold her for disappearing like that again, still angry about her leaving in the beginning, that she didn’t insist on him leaving with her. 

He stopped the car with a sharp movement that threw her, she leaned forward like a worn-out rag doll, and he prevented himself from caring or even looking, in a second he was out of the car and opening it for her, she got out with trembling steps to find that he had taken her to her aunt’s house, her foot almost betrayed her and she fell but she held herself together, she almost ran inside the house but she turned to him and closed her fingers in a feeble attempt to make him calm down and hear her, her voice came out very weak.

“I want you to know that I didn’t..”
“You’ve made a big fool of me in front of myself.” He interrupted her with a shake of his head.

Her face was red from crying, her brown eyes were red, her nose was bloody, her lips were full and trembling, her mouth was shaking and her body was shaking, he exhaled and looked away from her, her weak voice reaching him and tearing him apart, increasing the anger inside him.
“I didn’t mean to; I just… us being together was causing problems, so I pulled out because there’s someone else now, and she has every right to want me away from you.”

He turned to look at her, his tone rippling with the pain that emanated from the anger that was building inside him. “You thought about her and her rights, but me? Did you think about me?”

She sniffled her nose as she avoided his eyes, whispering his name in a low whisper that she could barely hear herself.

“And before, you left once because you thought of yourself, I didn’t blame you but now I think I should have.” He shouted in a voice that flashed with something dark and strange to him, to her, and to the city they lived in.

She couldn’t find the words to answer, but his words weren’t a question, they were a confrontation five years overdue, a confrontation he was going to end now. “And you disappeared again because you thought of someone who wasn’t me, you couldn’t see that I needed you to tell me before you decided to leave me every time, every time.”
He shook his head In disbelief, a layer of tears clouding his eyes, a layer that hurt her more than his anger, because she did not realize how much she had hurt him all this time.
“You always leave me this easily?”
She opened her mouth without gasping; she couldn’t believe that he thought like that, that he thought he was her easiest option every time, but she quickly denied it. “No Harry… no.”

“Then why do you do this every time? Because all the answers I can think of are ugly."

He yelled at her again, hiding his pain in anger; an angry man is normal, but a hurt man is not normal in society because that is weakness, men cannot be weak.

She stepped back in fear again; when he sensed her fear of him, he took a step back to stop her from talking.
“get in the house now because I can’t control myself now.”
“but…”
“Go.”

He shouted at her, so she ran home. While she was hiding inside the house, she heard the sound of his car screaming on the ground, as if he was burning her in his leavening, just as he was burning inside.

Love burns everything in its path, love is a dangerous ingredient and should not be played with.
~~

Why does her body become devoid of any feeling?

Why is there this absolute silence in the cells of her mind, as if all her conflicting, painful, screaming, and intense feelings had disappeared, hidden from his anger that she had endured alone, a revolution whose main and only fuse she was, but she did not know its demands and did not realize how to deal with them, it is a miserable and failed regime that stands helpless to extinguish the revolution and cannot even declare its victory.

She closed her eyes, re-envisioning his appearance for the millionth time in the past two hours, and she couldn’t even replay his words in her head. There was a complete silence, like a barren desert that the world had not discovered, that no human had ever set foot on. Perhaps it did not deserve to be discovered; perhaps it was a dark, concave place like a forbidden forest that must remain barren, deaf, silent, and desolate.
Only one sentence runs through her mind; Have you thought of me?
Of course, she thought so but she couldn’t prove it, she knew before she left that he wouldn’t be able to leave his mother, and she wouldn’t make him choose to go with her on top of his mother’s anger and Boycott him, on top of depriving him of his inheritance which was entirely in her hands, and she wouldn’t be happy with him choosing her over his mother because he would never be happy, so she chose to go alone, she just spared him from having to be the one to choose.

And when she disappeared the second time, it was because she didn’t want to put him in the middle; she wouldn’t put herself in comparison to a woman he chose, or she chose him to move on; she chose to walk away because she loved him.

But perhaps all of this was the result of her thoughts alone. She did not share it with him or give him the right to choose with her, and he had this right and she should have given it to him.

Have you thought about it?
He’s all she thinks about, but in a way that hurts him time and time again.
“Marla.”

She noticed her aunt’s sharp voice, she turned around with pale features and an eye that did not see her, she was wandering in her silence trying to extract thoughts from the depths of her barren desert, she heard her aunt’s nervous voice but did not give her full attention.
“I knew this would happen.”

She shook her head in incomprehension, and Katherine continued dully. “Harry again.”

She raised her eyebrows in surprise, not understanding how she knew, so she shook her head in question.
“how ..”
“Yvonne, she saw you and him and Anne fighting with you in the square.” I interrupted her sharply.

Her eyebrows straightened in realization; what she was talking about was what happened a week ago, and she shook her head in denial. “She wasn’t fighting with us, just a simple misunderstanding.”

The mocking laughter on her aunt’s face told her that she didn’t believe her words, approaching where she stood in the dark and lashing out in response. “Misunderstanding! I don’t think so, she saw you with her boyfriend, and she told you that your relationship with him now, even if it was a friendship, was not appropriate, especially in a city like this.”

She sighed emotionlessly, mocking the city and its people. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“But people don’t understand that.”
She scoffed, and a distant thought came back to her about how bad the city was, a small city that lived on gossip and scandals; her aunt had chosen it for a reason she didn’t know, but it suited her well.
“Neither do you.”
“What?”

Catherine’s eyebrows rose in question, disapproving of Marla’s response, who shrugged her shoulders in surrender. “You too, aunt, don’t understand the complexity of the situation between Harry and me.”

Honestly, she doesn’t care. She’s extremely moody, playing roles, treating her like her daughter one time, then like a forced caretaker another time, just a lady hosting a girl in her house another time. She shook her head in frustration, declaring it frankly. “You’re right, I don’t understand it and I don’t want to understand it, but I know that his mother didn’t want this relationship that you left and moved on with your life and that he’s now with another girl whose his mother approves of her and the whole town knows that they’re about to get engaged and married.”

She moved closer as she spoke until there was only a breathing space between them. She faced her harshly for her good. The principle that I hurt you because I care about you, which someone put in the water a long time ago and made all humans swallow without understanding, she now takes as a living, fake shield that hurts her. “And your reappearance with him will turn you into a corrupt girl trying to steal a man from his fiancée. No one will accept you or look at you well, or will make you something I am ashamed to call you.”

She clenched her fist violently, grinding her teeth together. “This is what made me leave in the first place.” She opened her eyes to face her, shouting at her. “You want to know why I left without looking back? Because this city is an unlivable society. All of you have nothing to do but dig into other people’s lives and judge them. You live on scandals and gossip and rumors, and none of you think about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes or even letting them mind their own business.”
She took a step back, her fists clenching as she shouted. “I appreciate that you raised me after my parents died, but I hate you for making me live here.”

Catherine gasped as she heard this from her niece’s lips, her eyes flashing with something like fearful indignation. “But I like living here, and Helen controls everything and everyone here, and I don’t want to lose my life because you can’t stay away from her son.”

That’s all she cares about, that’s the crux of her rejection of her relationship with Harry even when they were just children because she senses Helen’s rejection and doesn’t want to lose her, she doesn’t want to lose the feeling of being part of this city’s community, there’s a reason for her clinging to this closed life, a reason that Marla realizes but she’s never been brave enough to tell herself about, she distances herself from it because it simply doesn’t concern her.

“I know she’s all you care about, and I’m trying to stay away from her. I haven’t seen her since that day.” She hesitated for a moment but didn’t mention today’s meeting, flashing her a defiant glance. “But he doesn’t want me to go away, so you can tell her that her son wants me around too.”

She rushed to the door from her side, and before she left, she turned around in a fit of anger, resentment, and sadness. “But Auntie, the next time Yvonne tells you about what she saw from afar as she walked her dog, tell her to stick her nose into her own damn life, and maybe then she will realize that her husband has been cheating on her with her sister for years and that her nephew, who she thinks is a result of her sister’s wild night is her husband’s son.”

With a second gasp from her aunt, she was outside, holding the door and looking at her with a wave of anger similar to Harry’s, as if she had been touched by him. “And I think that’s more exciting than me and Harry and Anne.”

She also knows things, secrets, and scandals; she is also one of the residents of this city that, whether she wants to or not, hears everything; gossip and secrets are thrown before her, black crows that never stop cawing, boiling day and night with chatter.

She knows, but she doesn’t try to think about what she knows; she doesn’t interfere or claim to be perfect or throw a word here and there. She knows, but she pretends not to know because this is right even if a pack of hyenas thinks otherwise. 

She closed the door without looking back, turned and crossed the small garden towards the street, walked with her phone under the quiet night’s wing and her mind returned to silence again, burying her thoughts and feelings in the barren, undiscovered desert that perhaps no one will discover.