Michael v: Unnatural

By the time he sat down next to her, the raindrops started to fall. She was still looking up at the clouds, so he couldn’t tell if her face was streaked with tears or rain; he also couldn’t tell what she was feeling or thinking since her face was still a blank mask. In that moment Michael felt closer to his mother than he had in years; he too understood the need to conceal what was going on underneath the skin, keep all your emotions and desires secret. Could it be that they weren’t that different? Could it be that she understood? No.

“Michael,” his mother said, her eyes unblinking in the rain. “I want you to get married right on these steps so you can have a good start in life.” She had no idea. “If only I had gotten married here, standing on this solid wood instead of foreign soil, maybe my marriage would have been built upon a stronger foundation, maybe I wouldn’t have broken my vows. And maybe I wouldn’t have disappointed so many people.”

She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, allowing the rain to cascade down her face and through her hair, and finally she displayed some emotion. She smiled. Her sins were being washed away. Swept off her skin by the rain to be absorbed by the church steps. And if that didn’t do the trick, there was always a pill.

Without looking into her purse, she found the pill she needed, the one that would help. She opened her mouth and collected the rain. Michael watched, amazed by the primitive yet efficient gesture, as his mother waited until a little puddle was created in her throat and then she popped the pill into her mouth. She swallowed both the rain and the pill, like they were the blood and body of Christ. Sitting next to his mother, witness to her own private mass, Michael felt the stab of truth in his gut: He could not rely on her to protect or defend him. She was too engaged in her own struggle for survival. And even though he felt a certain amount of empathy for his mother, he noted with more than a small degree of sadness that what he felt even more for her was disappointment.

Lying in his bed later that night, A Separate Peace folded against his chest, he dreamed, not of disappointment, but of satisfaction. For some reason, Phineas looked just like R.J. and had an accent, British, Irish. Michael couldn’t place it, but he liked the way it sounded; the rhythm and the lilt were comforting. Phineas was telling him that he could jump from the tree, that the fall wouldn’t hurt him, and even though he was high, very high above the grassy knoll, Michael trusted him. Arms outstretched, chest inflated, Michael leapt into the air and for a few brief seconds he floated without concern, without fear, with only the certainty that love could bring. He knew that neither Phineas nor R.J. would lie to him, he knew that his landing would be soft. What he didn’t expect was that his landing would be wet.

Instead of touching down on the ground, Michael plunged through the surface of water. He didn’t know if he fell through a lake, an ocean, a pool; he only knew he felt water, cold but exhilarating, engulf him tenderly. He could feel every inch of his body, every pore, submit to its power and it felt wonderful, it felt natural, and when Phineas reached his hand out to him, Michael instinctively reached his hand out to grab hold. When Phineas pulled Michael close to him and his face morphed into R.J.’s, Michael didn’t pull away but allowed the older boy’s strength to embrace him. Here in his dream, underwater, Michael could finally admit this was where he wanted to be, in another boy’s arms, looking directly into eyes that were like his, eyes that in real life, that on land, had not yet been found.

R.J.’s hazel eyes beckoned Michael to come closer, and so he did. He saw in them understanding and beauty and peace and he longed for all those qualities to permeate his soul, and so he came even closer to R.J. until their faces were separated by only a thin strip of water. Their mouths opened and breathed; here they were not restricted by nature, here they could breathe, here they could do anything they wanted. And what they wanted to do, what Michael wanted to do most of all, was to become one with R.J., give himself up entirely to him so he wouldn’t feel so alone. He felt the heat within his body ignite against the cold water and his mouth searched R.J.’s. He wanted to kiss him, fully and powerfully, and he knew that R.J. wanted to do the same thing.

But what R.J. did was scream.

Shrieking loudly, R.J. pulled away, pushed Michael from him so he tumbled backward, stumbling in the water’s current. Shrieking as if he were in agony. How could Michael think he wanted to do something so disgusting as to kiss another boy? How could Michael think that he would want to do something so vile? R.J. was shrieking so loudly, the vibrations made the water start to churn; it came alive, spinning like a whirlpool that threatened to swallow Michael whole. Deep, guttural screeching that caught in Michael’s ears and wouldn’t let go. Now the sound was higher, a shrill piercing that pushed Michael through the water’s surface and left him gasping for air. That’s when he realized the screams were not coming from his dream, but from downstairs.

Startled, Michael shot up in bed, his book falling to the floor. “Noooooo!!!” His eyes darted around his bedroom; he couldn’t see much as the room was lit up only by the moonlight peering through his window, but even still he knew that he was alone. R.J. and Phineas were gone; they were no longer beside him. The voice, however, hadn’t left. “Let go! Get him off of me!” He recognized that voice because he had heard it scream many times before. It was his mother’s.

He reached the top of the stairs just in time to see two men grab his mother from both sides, each one holding a different arm. They made sure to grab her by the forearms, not far below her elbow, but far above her bloody wrists. Michael wondered why they hadn’t worn protective gloves if they were concerned with getting their hands bloodstained, since this wasn’t the first time they had been called to this house for such an emergency.

The woman who writhed and wriggled between the two men looked nothing like the woman who had sat on the church steps earlier that day. Michael reminded himself that his mother could go from tranquil to frenzied in much shorter time and had previously done so; this should be no surprise. But of course it was. This woman was still his mother.

“Go back to your room!” his grandpa shouted as Michael was halfway down the stairs. “We don’t need you down here!” Frozen, Michael couldn’t move. He wasn’t ignoring his grandpa’s directive; he just for the moment couldn’t follow it. There was too much going on.

A third man entered the house, holding a syringe, and when Grace saw this, her tearless eyes grew more wild and fearful, her movements quicker and more convulsive. She knew what was coming. She knew the needle of the syringe would be jabbed into her skin, its liquid would be unleashed into her bloodstream, and she would lose control. She would wake up somewhere unfamiliar knowing, when her mind cleared, that once again she was a disappointment to those around her.

Michael too was disappointed with those around him. In the corner of the room he saw his grandma fumbling through a rosary, looking helpless and, Michael couldn’t believe he felt this, pathetic. She couldn’t even find the strength to look at her daughter but instead gazed at the rosary beads as if they had some power. The only power they had was the ability to make her ignore her daughter’s true problems, stare at the white beads, not at the white jacket that the men were now putting on his mother. A white straitjacket that, unfortunately, was a perfect fit.

He was also disappointed with his grandpa, which he loathed to admit was not so unusual. The old man told the paramedics that he wouldn’t be riding with them in the ambulance and that he wouldn’t be following in his car, either. He wasn’t going to the hospital this time; somebody had to wash out the blood from the rug before it left a stain.