When You Are Gone

Chapter 5

It was cold. Too cold for summer, someone could get frostbites in this weather. Cold weather makes people sad – it's a scientific fact, or so it might as well just be. So Saturday, I woke up feeling sad. The sky was overshadowed, grimacing gloomily over the face of the earth – spreading its negative energy to all its innocent victims, and I was one of them – sitting up on my bed, leaning against my headboard, almost drowning in my own depression. There is a world, a life happening out there, outside Francie, if this was true, then why was I so unhappy without her? One minute you're living perfectly without ever knowing what love is, without knowing the power it possess, oblivious to the idea altogether, the next you can't live without it. You can't live without a complete stranger that just walks in uninvited in your life and makes themselves your necessity. She hadn't tried to talk to me, I hadn't seen or heard from her and it had been a week now, literally, seven days. Was she really upset, mad at me because of Ackley. God! Just the sound of his name made me sick to my stomach.

For a second, lying in my bed, I understood how people write love songs. These emotions that you are unaware just beg to be let out. I broke off the ties of this strange weather that bound me to my bed and made it on my feet. Walking on the floor gave a painful, numbing sensation to the rest of my legs. Pain in my legs reminded me of her.

"Mom," I called softly pushing her bedroom door open. She was sitting on her bed, arched over, rummaging her handbag for something. I heard the tickets, loose keys and diapers rattle.

"Hey," she said without turning back. She sniffled and said, "Hey, honey," as an adjustment.

"I could come back later."

"No." She pushed away the handbag and turned to face me, "come here, you wanna talk?"

The dark rim around her eyes had gotten darker, her eyes were red. She had been crying, I could tell. I just wanted to put my arms around her and tell her it was okay, whatever she was crying about was going to be alright and I was going to make sure of it.

"Come, sit."

I sat on the canopied bed next to her.

"Are you okay, honey?" she asked. She sniffed again.

"I could ask you the same question."

"I'm fine, Roman," she placed her head in her palm and she was quiet for a while. And then she lifted up her head and flushed that smile, that smile to masquerade the pain that she'd wore that night after Gina's confirmation.

"I'm just a little under the weather, that's all. I'll get over it." That smile again. "What did you want to talk about?"

The words imprisoned in my mouth were let out on probation, "I'm still with Francie."

"I know," she said abruptly.

"Are you angry?"

She shook her head, "No. Are you happy?"

That was a difficult question to answer. Happiness and love are two counterparts, unacquainted with the existence of each other, "Yes."

"Then, I'm happy." She didn't sound quite convincing.

"And Gina?"

"She's going to have to suck it up," she said, "I trust you to make the right choices. You're old enough to make your own choices. I don't know much about that girl but I know you and I know you are all about right choices, and that girl seems nice." Everything pointed back to choices.

She smiled. I couldn't comprehend why. Why did she behave like this, I had come armed for war but I got a white flag in the first battle. She stood up, poured pills into her hand from a little brown bottle and she downed them with a golden-brown liquid in a glass – whiskey. She rarely drinks alcohol. When she does it's either she's sipping Chardonnay at the dinner table when Simon is around or occasionally, she takes one of Simon's whiskies when she is depressed because of something and this was one of the occasions.