The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope

23

‘I know that you’ve carried this around with you for a long time. I understand how much it would have hurt you and how difficult it was for you to live with your father and then for him… but you’re not there anymore.’

I am eating my way through an apple. The strange thing about being given free rein over what you eat is that your body starts to cry out for something more after a few months. I started to crave fruit when I lived with my father, the same way some kids lust after junk food.

After he died and they sent me back to live with my mother, I could see she thought the problem had been solved.

‘We can start again,’ she told me. ‘I’ve found a good counsellor and we can go together and we can just start again.’

But I didn’t want to spend any time with her. I was failed by both of them and the only thing I wanted was to leave my past behind and start my life again. At fifteen, I just wanted to move on. I imagined that becoming an adult and having control of my life would make everything different, but here I stand because of a woman who made a decision, who broke my heart and unravelled whatever life I had built for myself. Here I stand because exactly the same thing that happened to my father has happened to me.

I carried the guilt of my own part in his death with me all the time. It weighed me down and made me tired and apathetic about my own existence. If I had only listened to him when he lectured me, or maybe if I had found a way to get him some help… If I had been a better son, then he would have believed there was a reason for him to stick around, to try and give up the alcohol and get off the sofa. But I wasn’t and I knew it was my fault he was dead.

‘I don’t want to live with you,’ I told her. ‘I would rather go into foster care.’ I enjoyed the way those words hit her, shocking her so that she crumpled a little and sank into a chair.

‘You hate me that much?’ she asked.

‘He wouldn’t be dead if you had taken him back.’ Such a simple thing for a wife to do. Forgive. Listen, understand and forgive.

I stare at the three of them on the sofa now. The children are dozing in the heat but she is still watching me, her one cheek swollen, her wrist puffed up, watching and waiting for a chance to get away.

‘Only a few weeks ago, I was happy,’ I say. ‘I thought I had everything figured out.’

She is quiet, seeking refuge in silence, afraid of what I may do if she says something wrong. I like her like this.

I think about falling in love, about that first rush of excitement when all you can think about is that person and you spend your whole day just waiting to see them. Those first few months, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. When she asked me to move in with her, I was like a kid at Christmas, so excited I couldn’t sleep the night before. The first night I moved in we stayed up all night talking, planning, even naming our future children.

I had already told her about my father dying and I had explained that I was estranged from my mother. One night, a few months after we met, I told her about my childhood as we sat in front of a fire in a pub on a cold night. It was pouring outside but we had braved the weather to go looking for a good burger and we found ourselves in an old-fashioned pub with a dartboard on the wall and a large fire roaring in a stone fireplace, blackened with age. The burgers were pretty good and we were the only two in the place.

‘Why don’t you want to talk to her?’ she asked me that night in the pub.

‘I can’t,’ I told her. And then I explained about my father. She listened quietly, occasionally touching my hand, her eyes shining with unshed tears for my tragic childhood. I thought that was the end of it. I thought we would never have to discuss it again, that I would never have to think about it again.

I felt completely accepted by her. Once you’ve shared your childhood demons with someone, there is a connection that shouldn’t be broken. I knew in the pub that night that I’d found a woman who would never break my heart and who would always understand me and what I needed. I feel really stupid about that now because I was warned by my father, but I somehow thought that it would be different for me.

The longer we were together, the more she lectured, argued, tried to control me. That’s what she was doing. She was trying to control me. My father’s note came back to me again and again. I should never have allowed myself to fall in love. I could see it coming, a slow-motion movie of my life and how it would play out. First, she would try to change me and I would grow frustrated with her. My father cheated on my mother and maybe somewhere deep inside me was the gene for that, the need for that. I used to imagine scenarios where I did meet another woman, where I could be with someone who didn’t need me to be a different person to the one she had liked in the first place. And then I saw her telling me it was over and kicking me out and I didn’t even need to think about what that terrible spiral down into addiction and depression would look like. I had watched it, been part of it and I couldn’t stand the idea that it was going to happen to me. I felt trapped by how much I loved her and how much I knew she was going to hurt me. I should have left then but I kept hoping. In some weird way I’m still hoping that it can all be fixed, that it can be put right. I just needed to do something drastic, something big. I needed to make her understand that leaving me, that our parting, was simply not an option.

But I’m not sure now. I’m not sure where I go from here or what I do, and strangely, I would like to be able to ask my father what I should do. But he’s gone because it all got too much for him and I can’t let that happen to me. I have to see this through.

I have no choice.

I drop my apple core on the floor, watching her eyes widen at the gesture. It’s laughable that something that ridiculous still has the ability to affect anyone considering where we all are now.

‘My life wasn’t meant to go like this, you know,’ I tell her.

‘That’s not my fault,’ she says, frustration in her voice.

‘Then whose fault is it?’ I ask as I rub the gun against my shirt, ridding the handle of my sweat.

‘It’s…’ she begins, but I shake my head at her.

I don’t care to listen to her answer.