A Broken Kind of Life (3 page)

SPENCER:
That and I got sick of being the token freak.

NELLE:
What do you mean?

SPENCER:
I was starting to think my first name had been changed to “deaf boyfriend” as in “This is my deaf boyfriend Spencer.”

NELLE:
That’s ignorant.

SPENCER:
Yeah, well, no sex is worth putting up with that.

NELLE:
No kidding. Well, at least now you’re free to meet someone at your own school.

SPENCER:
I don’t see that happening.

NELLE:
Why? You’re smart, charming, and adorable. :-)

SPENCER:
To you, maybe. To everyone else, I’m the freakish retard who can’t hear.

NELLE:
Don’t say that.

SPENCER:
How about you? The right girl come along yet?

NELLE:
Nope. I’m starting to think Prop 8 ran all of the good lesbians out of California.

SPENCER:
LOL So, come home. I miss you.

NELLE:
I’ve applied at a few places in Chicago, honey. I’m working on it. I miss you too. How’s your dad?

SPENCER:
The same

NELLE:
He’ll get through it. I think he needs something to focus on. Like when your mom died. He didn’t have time to go to pieces because we were taking care of you.

SPENCER:
I don’t know what that would be. It’s not like I need my diaper changed anymore.

NELLE:
Let’s hope.

Spencer laughed and sat back against the headboard of the bed. He missed Nelle. For all intents and purposes, she was his mom and he’d always thought of her that way. The best part was, when he came out to her in high school, she did too and let him know that he wasn’t alone. Better than acceptance—it was affirmation that someone else knew exactly how he felt, that he’d never be alone. He knew he’d lucked out with that; most kids got indifference at best.

They talked for a while longer as he ate his pizza and tried not to let her see how lonely his life had become. Being in California, she might as well have been on the other side of the world. She couldn’t help him find friends that accepted him. She couldn’t explain to people that he spoke so slowly because he couldn’t hear, not because he was stupid.

When David had been assigned to him as a tutor so he could pass his last year of History, he thought maybe he’d found someone he could relate to. David had kissed him at the end of their third session together, and for the first time, Spencer felt wanted. The dream lasted about two months. Two months of kissing and touching, and lip read conversations before David started introducing him as his “deaf boyfriend,” shattering Spencer’s illusion of being normal. He wasn’t normal. Even when they made out, David accentuated his speech, like dirty talk needed perfect enunciation. It humiliated Spencer to the point where sometimes, he didn’t even want to jack off because he could see David’s mocking face in his head. His relief at their breakup masked his underlying fears, because of course, even David’s screwed up version of love was better than nothing, right?

Spencer set the laptop aside, closed his eyes, and wondered what it would be like to have a guy look past his deafness and actually see
him
.

A
ARON
was sitting quietly, picking at his grilled cheese sandwich, when his mother came into the kitchen with an envelope. He saw it was addressed to him, but when he shrugged at her, she opened it instead. Taking another bit of soup so she could see, he waited, remarkably uninterested, for the results of his final homeschool exams. Part of him hoped he had failed every subject so he could bow out of any further discussions of college, but the smile that spread across his mother’s face told him otherwise. Looking into his mother’s overly bright, misty eyes, he understood what she was feeling. By all rights, he should have died that night in the garage with Juliette, so the fact that he even had results to mail was a miracle.

“I am so incredibly proud of you, Aaron. When we chose to homeschool you those last two years, I didn’t know if you’d ever be… if you’d… but you did,” she stammered and then handed him the sheet of paper. Underneath the pretentious state logo was a list of his achievements. He had managed to pass every subject. In a few, like English, he was sure his results were born more of pity than the actual quality of his work.

He didn’t care.

“Let’s… I mean…. Can we take you out to dinner to celebrate?” The hopeful longing in her face made the polite refusal he was about to give die in his throat. Shame burned on the back of his neck like the summer sun. She had done so much for him and asked for so little in return. Couldn’t he just give her this one thing? From her expression, it looked like her whole life depended on his answer to the question.

Slowly, he nodded.

His mother did manage to restrain herself from hugging him, but just barely, and unfortunately he had reached the upper limit of his accommodations for the day. He was grateful she didn’t hug him, because one of his meltdowns in the kitchen would have just punctuated the afternoon nicely. Things were starting to get bad for him again; he could feel it. Some days were better, but lately, his depression was taking him on another downward spiral. He tried so hard to keep things from spinning out of control, but trying to hide the depth of his depression from his mother had become exhausting. Aaron tried so hard to keep the worst of his symptoms from her, because she had so many other things to worry about. Sometimes, when the demons came calling inside his head, he saw just how much caring for him was taking a toll on her. In those moments, he wished he’d just have the balls to end her pain, and his, but he didn’t. It was just one more thing in his life he wasn’t man enough to do.

“Okay, well, Allen has his first date tonight, so maybe tomorrow night,” she said, her beaming smile bringing him back from those dark thoughts. It was a bit of a comfort to him that Allen had a date. His brothers had to deal with so much, and finally they were able to start living somewhat normal lives, despite their psychotic brother. Aaron left more than half his sandwich on the plate but finished his soup, tipping up the bowl and drinking it. He hoped that would appease her almost constant need to feed him.

“Mom, I’m going to go lie down for a while,” Aaron told her as she took his dishes to the counter near the sink. The combination of all the pills and omnipresent suffocating depression made Aaron feel tired, lethargic. Some days, this tiredness allowed him to finally escape for a few hours in the dreamless sleep of a midafternoon nap. On other days, he would just stare restlessly at the ceiling or the TV, the very idea of sleep eluding him.

It started off as most of his dreams did, with that last debate practice. Juliette was the captain, but Aaron was the best on the team. They were trying to get other students involved, since it was the beginning of the term, trying to get them engaged to see which ones would make the team that year. Aaron always helped out with recruiting because the debate team was important to Juliette, and Juliette was important to Aaron. That night, the topic they pulled from the list was euthanasia. Juliette was on pro and Aaron was left with con. It didn’t matter how they personally felt about the topic; they still needed to put together a concise, effective strategy for debating the issue. Juliette explained to the assembled students that voluntary, active euthanasia was about people deciding how they wanted to live and die. The government should not be able to legislate a person’s free will if they weren’t injuring another party. Denying a person the choice of ending his own pain and suffering was unfair and cruel. These were valid points, and Aaron knew arguing them would not win him any favor. His explanation of the cons of euthanasia was on a different level. By actively taking the life of a person, especially one who is in inexorable pain, one could not know if the consent given was voluntary. A person with substantial wealth could be murdered with no legal recourse. Even assuming the absence of foul play, a mistaken diagnosis could end someone’s life needlessly.

By the end of the debate, Aaron and Juliette had been furiously hurling facts and arguments at each other with such voracity that other students discussed the possibility of intervening. That’s just how Aaron and Juliette were, passionate and competitive. Friends since grade school, they knew exactly how to push each other’s buttons and what their next line of defense would be; they made a hell of a debate pair.

The dream skipped around—the walk, the van, the screaming, the pain, the blood.

Aaron shot bolt upright in bed, the scream caught in his throat. His bedroom was dark, which confused him further, and then he heard the doorbell ring.
The men were there
.
They’d never been caught, and they were there.
The men who had hurt him, had killed Juliette, they were there to finish the job. The men would kill his family like they had killed Juliette. Without thinking, without stopping to consider that his attackers would hardly ring the bell, he vaulted out of bed and practically fell down the stairs. The sight at the front door stopped him in his tracks. Intellectually, on some level, he realized it was just Allen and his date, but Allen wore his letterman’s jacket, just like Aaron had been wearing that night. His date wore a sweater and jeans, her auburn hair falling straight down around her delicate face, reminding him of Juliette.

The flashback hit without any warning.

Juliette screaming.

Juliette begging for her mother.

Juliette begging Aaron to make them stop.

Juliette covered in blood.

The man’s breath on the back of his neck.

The knife slicing his face.

The blade cutting across his throat.

“Mom!” Anthony screamed as Aaron fell to his knees on the living room carpet. Their mother, terrified and completely bewildered, knelt next to her eldest son.

“Mom, don’t let me go! Please, they’ll hurt me, Mom! Please…,” Aaron pleaded, trying to force the images, the memories from his mind.

Allen’s date, who had no idea what was happening, began to get scared, backing slowly toward the door. Allen looked over at her and then at his brother on the floor. If Aaron had been seeing his brother at all as he knelt on the floor trying to keep from sobbing, he would have seen that Allen’s face, now ruddy and flushed, was livid. Their lives had been so screwed up for so long, and Aaron was ruining the first real sense of normalcy, the first real date Allen had ever had. Aaron knew both Allen and Anthony must catch hell at school for their freak brother, and Allen had finally found a girl to look past that.

“Shut up, Aaron!” Allen roared, obviously humiliated by his brother’s psychotic meltdown in the middle of the living room.

His hands were gripped into tight fists at his sides, and despite all the love and respect he surely felt for Aaron, Allen seemed to have finally reach his breaking point. Two years of their parents’ misery, two years of night terrors, and two years of wanting more than anything to have his brother back had finally taken its toll on Allen. Shaking, he turned to his date and held out his hand wordlessly.

“Maybe we should do this another time,” the girl said, with one hand on the doorknob. She looked like a frightened fawn ready to bolt.

“No, Carrie, just give me a minute, please…,” he pleaded with her, and she nodded as she continued to wait with her hand on the door. Allen turned on his brother, his eyes ablaze, fueled by his date’s fear.

“I am not you! I am not stupid! You got lured into a van and screwed up everything!” Allen yelled, and all the blood left Aaron’s face as the flashback began to recede, and he realized what he had done. Everything Allen had to deal with just living in the same house with him, and he had just terrified the poor girl before they could even get out the door. He felt like Quasimodo in the bell tower, the freak that should be hidden away for everyone’s peace of mind, maybe even for his own good.

“My brother is a lunatic,” Allen told his date, almost drowning out his mother’s shocked gasp. Before anyone could call him back, he grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled her out the front door, leaving his trembling brother kneeling helplessly on the living room carpet. It was the first time anyone had said it aloud, but Aaron felt with perfect clarity that it was true. He would never be normal. He would never be anything but a burden, a source of shame and discomfort for his parents and his brothers. Not for the first time, Aaron wished he had died with Juliette and not been left to linger in this damaged shell.

Hours later, after Aaron had been properly medicated and put to bed, Allen came in to check on him. Aaron was propped up on pillows, staring blankly at the wall near the foot of his bed. It was always like this when he was drugged, like he was in some kind of suspended animation. Unable to move because his limbs were just too heavy, unable to think because his mind was full of fog, he simply existed. If they stood him in the corner, he could have been a potted plant, except he was no longer nice to look at. Aaron had heard Allen enter the room, but it took him a moment in his medicated state to respond. The guilt that consumed his brother was plain on Allen’s pale face.