A Broken Kind of Life (2 page)

Almost
.

Leaving his towel and discarded clothes on the floor, the boy grabbed his MP3 player and a battered paperback from his cluttered bedside table and ambled down the stairs toward the kitchen. He felt almost childlike in his oversized clothes—clothes that had fit just a few months before. He stayed very close to the railing, curled in on himself, and stopped at the bottom to look around.

“Good morning, Aaron,” his father said brightly, only to have his smile falter when Aaron just nodded and walked past the table where the older man sat, relaxed and deep into his morning routine. The huge polished table, where his family had dinner together every night, stood guard between the kitchen and the open family room. Aaron was thankful for that airy design because he’d started to feel very claustrophobic around his family—smothered by his mother’s attention, his father’s disappointment, and his brothers’ resentment.

His younger brothers, Allen and Anthony, hadn’t come downstairs yet. Aaron, Allen, and Anthony—their straight As, as his parents had joked before their first A became an F.

As on any other weekday morning, his father sat drinking his coffee and reading the paper. His pants and shirt were pressed to perfection, his tie neatly tied. The only thing missing was the jacket that hung on the back of his chair, ready to complete the perfect picture that was his father. John Downing was the epitome of stability and success, which just underscored his son’s inability to cope with life. Almost too good-looking, his father kept his black hair cropped into an efficient and elegant example of corporate style, with the flecks of gray—no doubt caused in large part by Aaron—giving him a distinguished air.

It was his eyes that gave him away, however. His clear, vibrant blue eyes, which most would describe as kind, held a deep sadness. The light that had been kindled with the birth of his first son had dimmed. Aaron didn’t look at his father often anymore, maybe even less often than he looked at anyone else. Before his life was destroyed so brutally in that garage two years ago, Aaron had been the image of his father. He had the same chin, the same nose, the same black hair, and the same blue eyes. Attractive and well liked, Aaron had been just like his father, who, as a corporate attorney in downtown Chicago, was smart and successful. John Downing served as a constant reminder of the man his son would never be.

Aaron leaned against the gleaming surface of the kitchen counter and grabbed a banana. He wasn’t hungry, but eating something helped to defuse the constant arguments with his mother about his weight loss. Though he never said it aloud, it didn’t matter if he ate, or if he wore his seatbelt, or even if he looked both ways before crossing. He was dead anyway; what difference did it make? It was only a matter of time before his body realized it, and he would finally have some peace.

Moving a little closer to the wall by sheer instinct, Aaron heard the thundering footsteps of what could only be his younger brothers as they pounded down the stairs. They both greeted him with a quick “Hey, man” before making their way to the table. Chairs clattered and scraped against the wood floor as the boys sat down with their father. John Downing started talking to Anthony about a play from the younger boy’s last soccer game, and it wasn’t long before both the boys were laughing and joking with their dad, while Aaron stood seemingly forgotten in the corner of the kitchen. Only their quick, anxious glances gave away the fact that he was never forgotten.

For over two years it had been that way: polite nods, the briefest of required conversations. People treated him like a china doll: one wrong word and he would crack. For the most part, sadly, it was true. Though his younger brothers knew, at least conceptually, what had happened to him, sometimes they did say things that set him off. Allen would mention Juliette, or Anthony would tell him he was going to kill him if he didn’t stop clicking the pen in his hand. They were horrified afterward by their slips. Of course, any normal person would have taken such comments in stride, but Aaron was far from normal.

He had become a complete stranger to his own family.

At the time Aaron’s world had changed, Allen had been fourteen and Anthony only ten. Aaron knew that, while he was still recovering in intensive care, his parents had sat his brothers down and explained as much as they could to them, given their young ages. Allen understood for the most part, but they had tried to shield Anthony from some of the horrific truths. Unfortunately, Aaron couldn’t hide all his scars, so eventually Anthony was faced point-blank with the brutality that had been visited upon his hero. When Aaron first came home from the hospital, the younger Downing boys just hadn’t understood that their older brother, the one they had played catch with, the one who had taken them to the movies and the arcade, was a different person. He wasn’t fun. He wasn’t outgoing. He was frightening and screamed in his sleep every night, terrifying them to the point they started to sleep in the rapidly finished basement. Aaron had offered, halfheartedly, to move to the basement, but the cement walls and the cold concrete floor reminded him of the place where the men had taken him. He couldn’t even make it down the steps. Thankfully, his parents wanted him close so they could help him.

It wasn’t too long before they had started to sedate him, anyway.

His mother was already nearby at the stove, finishing up their eggs, by the time Aaron came out of his thoughts. Since he was always so quiet, neither his parents nor his brothers had noticed he hadn’t been paying attention to anything around him for the last fifteen minutes. Of course, Aaron had done it frequently: completely shut down his attention to the outside world. These periods of dissociation from everything scared him. He was terrified that one day he’d get trapped in his own head and never find his way back out again.

His head was a very scary place to be.

Michelle Downing took the plates of eggs, bacon, and toast to her husband and younger sons at the table. Aaron hadn’t really even noticed that she’d been standing next to him cooking. He looked away from her stressed features and the premature gray in her hair, all caused by him. Her petite frame was where Aaron got his small stature, but that was one of the few similarities between Michelle and her eldest son. Where Aaron had inherited his father’s black hair, as had Anthony, Allen and his mother had chestnut curls. Aaron was the only child to get his father’s blue eyes. His brothers both had his mother’s soft brown eyes.

They had once been a typical close American family. John worked while his wife stayed home to raise their boys. Now their younger sons were left pretty much on their own, while their mother struggled to care for their damaged older brother. They no longer went on vacation because Aaron didn’t deal well with change. They rarely went out to dinner because Aaron hated groups of people. They took turns going to Anthony’s soccer games or Allen’s wrestling matches because they didn’t want to leave Aaron alone.

They all merely survived in the dark with no light on the horizon.

Aaron watched his family talking quietly as they ate around the table and felt a stabbing pain of loneliness. They were the happy family, and he was just the freak that lived upstairs. Physically, everything in the house was the same, from the apple accessories in the kitchen to the big-screen television in the family room where they used to watch baseball together.
He
was different. There wasn’t a place for him anymore, even though his chair sat empty at the table waiting for him. Without another word, he set the unpeeled banana back on the counter and walked past the table where his family sat glancing at him surreptitiously. Opening the sliding glass door directly behind his father at the head of the table, he walked out onto their huge deck and closed the door behind him. It felt better out here, less suffocating, with fewer expectations. He sat down on one of the patio chairs, looked over their small, well-maintained yard, and thought about how much he hated days like this, days where he just couldn’t turn off his mind.

He squinted into the morning sun as his mother joined him on the deck. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see she was wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt that probably belonged to his dad. She handed him an instant breakfast drink. He took it, opened the top, and sucked it down in one long drink. Mr. Handley next door stepped out onto his own deck as Aaron handed his mother the empty container. Aaron could feel the old man’s eyes on him across the fence and wondered if he could hear Aaron screaming in the night. He heard his mother’s quiet sigh as she reached down to smooth back a wayward piece of his hair, and he jerked away violently. He hated the fact that he couldn’t even stand to be touched by his own mother. With a visible effort, she forced the hurt from her face as he looked up but then turned and walked back into the house without another word.

Pulling his music player and the book from his pocket, he settled back on a nearby chaise, ignored his portly neighbor, and lost himself in someone else’s life.

S
PENCER
T
HOMAS
pulled the garbage can from beneath the sink and took inventory. Six empty Samuel Adams bottles and one Jack Daniel’s bottle. He knew the Jack Daniel’s bottle had been mostly empty from the weekend binge, but it still didn’t make him feel any better. He needed to have a talk with his father. Since the good doctor let his practice go, the drinking had gotten worse. The nightmares had gotten worse. Their lives had gotten worse.

With a sigh, he closed the cabinet door and left the alcohol graveyard in peace. It would be hours before his father emerged from the dark cave he called a bedroom, so Spencer ambled down the hall and into the rec room. He picked up his mother’s framed picture from his desk and looked at her face for the millionth time. Miranda Thomas died about three months before she was supposed to deliver her son, whom she left premature and in the hands of his father, Henry. Spencer had heard stories of his mother from his grandparents and from his Aunt Nelle, but never from his father. No one had to tell Spencer he’d gotten his shaggy brown hair and introspective hazel eyes from her. Even his freckles and pale complexion were a gift passed down to keep his mother alive in him. From his father, he’d inherited a small chin, button nose, and ingrained lack of self-control. They made for an interesting combination.

The phone in his pocket vibrated as he dropped into the plush leather chair in front of his desk. He pulled it out and checked the display.

NELLE:
Excited about school starting?

Spencer smiled despite his growing unease with his father’s drinking. Aunt Nelle always had a way of making him feel better, even from halfway across the country. She’d been a constant in his life, just a few streets over, until she’d got her doctorate after Spencer was all grown up. The more distant his father grew, the more Spencer missed his mother’s sister. His whole life, she’d felt like a link to the mother he’d never known.

SPENCER:
Yeah, pretty much.

NELLE:
Got time to chat for a bit?

SPENCER:
Give me 15 min?

NELLE:
For you, kid, I’d wait forever.

SPENCER:
I miss you.

Spencer put the phone back in his pocket before his emotions got the better of him. The air pressed in on him as he walked back into the kitchen and stood in front of the freezer looking for something to pop in the microwave before he went to log into chat with Nelle. For years, Spencer and his father had lived on takeout from every local restaurant that delivered and ready-made compartmentalized meals. He wondered, as a shrink, if that meant anything to his father—that their lives resembled those meals, divided into little plastic divots, and separated not only from each other, but from everyone else. Thinking back, Spencer couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen his grandparents. It was just him and Dad, and Dad had started to slip away.

Giving up on the freezer, he remembered they had leftover pizza from the night before, and pulled open the door. He felt conflicted about finding it there, just as he’d left it when he packed it away before bed. The lazy side of him appreciated that he didn’t have to do anything else to find food, but the fact that no pieces were missing meant his father wasn’t eating again. He grabbed a paper plate from the dwindling stack and dropped the remaining cold pepperoni slices onto it, ignoring the layer of congealed grease. After balancing the plate with one hand, he bent down and grabbed a Pepsi from the case to take up to his room. His dad never cared about him eating upstairs. Pretty much so long as Spencer didn’t commit murder, he was free to come and go as he pleased.

His father’s den and bedroom were both closed and dark when he passed. It was a toss-up as to which room his father was in, though he couldn’t hear the snores. Given the amount of empties in the kitchen garbage, he may have made it to his room, but more likely, he fell asleep reading in the den and just stayed in there on the couch. Spencer didn’t have the patience right then to figure out which so he kicked open his own bedroom door and set his lunch down on the desk. The brand-new laptop his father had bought him for college lay pristine and beautiful against his blankets. Sliding his thumb over the touchpad, he saw that Office had just finished installing.
Perfect.
He left the food on the desk, and logged into his e-mail. Double-clicking on the little green status indicator next to his aunt’s name, he brought up the chat window.

SPENCER:
Hey

NELLE:
Hi honey. How are you?

SPENCER:
Okay.

NELLE:
Just okay? Your dad still having a rough time of things?

SPENCER:
Yeah

NELLE:
How’s David?

SPENCER:
Gone. I haven’t talked to him since school let out, but he was supposed to be leaving for Stanford this week.

NELLE:
You guys break up because he went away to school?