Behind Closed Blinds Ch. 07

'Look, I wanted to talk,' she said, trying to avoid the subject. Who did that remind me of? And why did I feel like this talk was going to be as frustrating as the one I'd had with her dad?

Utter coldness. 'Why me?'

Ragged breathing. 'Because I hurt you.'

Blood simmering. 'Hurt is when you say things to knock people down. What you actually did was much worse,' I wanted to say. Somehow I didn't, in hindsight because of that damned righteousness I now hated about myself.

After a deep breath I told her that I had spoken to her dad, face to face. She did not like that at all, and I was tempted to hang up just to remind her where the line had last been drawn.

'He told me everything,' I said, now staring into space, still for the most part unaccommodating.

'Everything about what?'

'Stop dancing around the context, Carol. Everything means everything about why we are where we are,' I near snapped.

'Oh,' she sobbed. Crocodile tears or not, I felt nothing for her silent crying. 'So are you living with your mum now?'

I did snap. 'You stay the fuck away!'

'I was just asking, sorry!'

'You should go home too, Carol. Get the help you need.'

'I don't need their help,' she seethed.

'I mean professional help. They just offered you a roof over your head while you rehabilitate.'

'I have a roof over my head.'

'Then get help, for god's sake,' I groaned. I was pinching the bridge of my nose, eyes closed, listening to the cogs working in her mind, wondering whether she was so desperately trying to get me to cling to her, make it mutual, or if she was so far gone out of her mind that she didn't know what she wanted.

'Why can't you help me?' she finally asked.

My stomach churned. My mind swam. The room spun.

Because I wasn't a fucking health professional? Because I wasn't a moron either?

'Dad said he'd give you your old job back,' she said, and now I was disgusted again that either of them was trying to bargain me for reclamation of what? My body, my soul, my self-worth, my self-respect?

'Promises,' I muttered. The word rang true.

'Promises what? I'm trying to make things right. What will make you forgive me?'

'Oh, something about the road to hell,' I wanted to say.

'Move on! Unfuck yourself! Look back in five years and promise you'll never do this to anybody ever again,' I did say, thinking that it sounded reasonable. Her crying grew guttural, unbearable, maybe like a baby that had swallowed something it shouldn't have.

The very thought made me sick then, thinking of what her father had told me. Carol was in hell right now. I had believed that she deserved to be, too. Lesser deserving people had been there, died there.

About that though -- for as long as she would remain there, things would never be right by her, there would be no forgiveness, and I feared that she would drag me to hell with her for as long as things continued this way.

'Listen,' I said, more calmly, 'I can forgive your past, that... isn't something I could live with either,' I reached, 'and that's what this was all about, right?'

'I just want things back the way they used to be,' Carol sobbed.

'Pretending?' I begged. 'You want to go back to hiding things like that? You manipulated people to hide this.'

'I'll never do that again, I promise.'

'I know, tell it to the guy who makes everything right one day,' I responded, near green in the gills. 'It isn't me. There's no going back, don't you get it? There's only forward. I deserve that too.'

'You deserve everything,' she agreed, but I knew her words meant nothing now. So long as I didn't give her the answer she wanted to hear, what I said meant nothing at all. The possibilities chilled my blood all over again.

'For the record your dad was too proud to offer me my job back,' I said in all finality. 'Don't do anything stupid, go get help,' I said, and hung up.

5

Best intentions, I thought to myself, and the irony struck me sick. It didn't matter how innocent I thought I was in all of this, no matter how simple it could have been -- my part in this absolute shitshow -- I seemed to come away feeling like saying No just made everything worse.

Against my own gut feeling I messaged Derek immediately after, told him about the call, what was said, and what I did and didn't think had sunk in. I disregarded everything he had sent back, didn't even bother to read it.

No surprise that lies had still circulated between them. Pride might have been the end of them had it not made them so stubborn.

I finally told him that my part was done in all of this, but that I'd keep tabs from time to time, and that he would tell me -- truthfully -- that he was trying to help Carol to move on, to get help, and to keep her away from me.

"She loves you very much, you know," Derek had replied in the end, never one to leave a wound unsalted. And if that was how their whole family showed love, I was all the more relieved to have avoided becoming one of them. "She'd do anything to change things."

'I know she would,' I texted back, angry again, 'I've seen first-hand what you'll all do to have your own way.'