The Anatomy of a Parody Heart

fair

It is only around this time of year that Enzo is glad that Izzy is gone.

It is only around this time of year that Enzo lets himself think about her.

He remembers the night that she left them.

He remembers the rain.

It was the kind of rain that fell thick and fast, covering everything and anything; the porch, Mum's flowers, Izzy's glasses. Enzo couldn't see her eyes behind those glasses. Not with the rain. So he couldn't see whether she was crying or not.

Enzo hopes she was crying.

It made her look ghostly. Not-quite-real. She stood on the front step, with a tattered bag over her shoulder. A torch.

And those stupid, stupid glasses.

Enzo remembers the twins. He remembers how they tried to hug her. How she pushed them away.

How they cried.

Enzo remembers wanting to slam the door in her face.

It was the kind of wanting that made him glad, for just a second, that he couldn't feel.

Izzy - his big sister - Izzy - who made him glad, for just a second, that he was a freak.

Izzy, who left them for their father, because he was rich, because he could send her to college - because he was fair.

Enzo doesn't think that his father was fair. Enzo doesn't think that his father was fair at all.

How can you be fair, if you take one look at your new-born son - one look - and decide that he is not worth hanging around for?

It makes Enzo hurt.

It makes Enzo hurt, because the source of his mother's unhappiness is not his father. Not Izzy.

It is him.

Lying there now, on his back, in the bed that he shares with Robyn, in the room that he shares with Ren and Faith and Gem, Enzo lets himself hurt. He lets himself hurt until the hurt is in every part of his body. Until it fills him up.

Robyn would be happier with a whole bed. Or maybe the twins could move into it. And Robyn into Gem's.

Then they would all have beds.

Then maybe the twins would stop having bad dreams. Then maybe Faith would stop pissing herself, during the night.

Then maybe...

Enzo only allows himself so many maybes.

But he allows himself one question.

Just one.

Did his father cry, when he left them?

Did he cry as much as Mum; cry so much that he started drinking, and then going out, and then having twins who would never know their father, who would question their mother so repeatedly that she slammed doors and drank wine and cried and cried and cried?

The twins don't even look like Enzo, or Gem, or Robyn.

They look like nobody.

Enzo hopes his father cried.