State of Grace (Complete)

Falling Down

Ch 28

For the summer I've got my job at the camp again. This summer I get partial pay. Between camp and my night shifts at Sparkles! I manage to spend most of my time out of the house. Chris has a job at a music camp and is away from home for two months. It's really odd, not having him next door, but I know it's a trial separation really, because Chris will be leaving in a year for university. He's determined to go away, and I totally don't blame him. He and Carmine have taken a break over the summer, both realizing that although they really like each other, maybe there's other people out there for them. It's sad, but I guess that's the way high school relationships are supposed to go. Thankfully they didn't part with a lot of drama. Ian's doing summer school because he failed a class, and has a job at a local gas station. He finally got his licence, months after Chris, and now that Chris is away, he has the car to himself and is seldom home. Sometimes I see him with some random friends hanging out by the pool, Kyle's not with them, and I don't go down.

I discover something interesting towards the end of the summer. A few of the older counsellors at camp take me to a few parties with them, mostly populated by university students in town over the summer. I try lots of new things. I get drunk enough to pass out, and sick enough from it that I learn my limits with drinking, I take my first few hits from a pipe passed around and learn that I can numb myself from everything and just feel mellow. I make out with a few random guys and learn that my looks have some power. All these things I've discovered aren't really me, but they're a good diversion from my problems and the only thing that feels good lately.

SIXTEEN GRADE ELEVEN

I finally understand why Ian acted the way he did when his parents split up. He was only seven and reacted the only way he knew how. I am nearly sixteen and completely lost; I would love to hit or punch something. I am stuck with my insane mother while my father builds a new family and a new life. I am court ordered by the custody agreement to spend time with him a few weekends a month, but each time is like torture. I'm not sure which house is worse. At Dad's I have to sleep on a lumpy pull out couch in what is referred to as the baby's room, never mine, even though I am here first. Dad's attention which used to be doting and indulgent is now given over solely to Elizabeth and her 'condition.' The in jokes, the special nicknames, the extra attentiveness; those were all mine, just like they were my mother's before me and now they belong to Elizabeth. I finally understand how my mom felt when I was in the room with them, Daddy's not good at spreading his love around.

I never realized when I was little that my mom's depression is what caused her to spend so much time in bed and why she was so tough on me. Now she's a ghost of her former self. She gets out of bed to go to the bathroom, but most of the time she hides in her room, her foul odour the only thing she leaves behind when she exits a room. Whatever relationship we had, even the one based on her bitterness and overbearing nature has disintegrated. She doesn't care when I come or go, and seldom touches the food I leave for her. It's like living with a ghost, which is fine, because our whole house is like a mausoleum, a memorial for all the dead babies that she failed to carry, my parents decayed relationship, all that's left of it is me, slowly rotting. The drinking and weed help a bit, but I am drowning and no one is noticing.

Elizabeth is ridiculously smart when it comes to books, but not when it comes to dealing with people. She doesn't seem to get why I wouldn't want to be friends, or how I think she destroyed my family, such as it was. In reality I know it was a problem that was far bigger than her, and Daddy is just as guilty, but her beatific pregnant form, like an urbane madonna, is repulsive to me. I am the embodiment of hurt, and every second spent sleeping in the baby's room is like death by a thousand cuts.

I know when the baby comes in a few more months, I won't be a part of my father's life aside from his last name. Instead, I'll be interred like all the memories of our family with the corpse of my mother in our cold, bleak house.