Breaking Brooklyn (21 page)

Facebook Message from Brooklyn
Page Napier 9/6/2014 at 8:22 am:

I was good last night
:-) 

Facebook Message from Tyler Ward
9/6/2014 at 8:23 am:

That's awesome! Don't you feel
good about yourself?  

Facebook Message from Brooklyn
Page Napier 9/6/2014 at 8:24 am:

I do!  I want to thank you.
 You have really been my best friend these last few months.
 

Facebook Message from Tyler Ward
9/6/2014 at 8:25 am:

<3 

Facebook Message from Brooklyn
Page Napier 9/7/2014 at 8:00 am:

OMG, Nick wouldn't stop calling me
last night.  When I didn't answer his calls or text messages
he got hostile. Look at this message:  

Where the fuck are you, Brooke!!
Why aren't you answering my calls or text messages?  This is
bullshit!  Are you fucking someone else? 

You better hope you’re not with
some other guy! 

Facebook Message from Tyler Ward
9/4/2014 at 8:01 am:

That's not good, Brooke!
 

Facebook Message from Brooklyn
Page Napier 9/4/2014 at 8:03 am:

I know, then this morning he sent
me a message apologizing.  He said he was drunk and worried
about me. I think he's bipolar! 

Facebook Message from Tyler Ward
9/4/2014 at 8:04 am:

This is not a good situation!
 You need to stay far away from him.  

Cindy

Chapter
twenty-four

"In the end one needs more courage
to live than to kill himself."
~
Albert Camus

Cindy Napier’s Diary

May 31 1995

My life is filled with nothing but emptiness
and regret. I have dug a hole so deep there is no getting out. All
I can do is self-medicate to cope with the hatred I have for
myself.

I had so much potential before my senior year
in high school. My modeling career was starting to take off, I had
professional pictures taken, and my mother and I were talking to an
agent in New York City. My life was so exciting.

Then came Jack. I have never come to grips
with the circumstances that caused my pregnancy. In fact, I have
tried to block it out of my memory my entire life. But it has
caught up to me in the wake of my father’s death.

Jack’s father is… my father.

Even writing this makes my stomach feel like
it's filled with razorblades.

It happened my junior year in high school. My
father was buying me and my friend’s alcohol and our house had
become the place to party. In my father’s warped brain, having the
party at the house was his way of being a part of my life. He would
get so drunk he would completely black out. His relationship with
my mother was completely falling apart. She was working three jobs
to keep the bills paid which left me alone with my father most of
the time.

When my father would get really drunk he would
crawl in bed with me and try cuddle. At first it was innocent, like
when I was a child. But, then it became inappropriate. I was
drinking myself and would barely remember the night
before.

On carbonation day at the Indy 500 my life
changed forever. The sad thing is I don't even remember. My friends
and I skipped school to go to the track. It was an all day party
followed by an all-night party back at my house. That’s when I
blacked out.

I woke up the next morning in bed with my
father! I didn't have any clothes on and neither did he. I was
shocked. I immediately got dressed. My father was passed out. Even
in death he has no idea what happened. As far as he knows he woke
up alone.

At first, I just thought we were drunk, that I
had fallen asleep in my father’s bed like I did when I was a kid.
But when my period was late I became concerned. I really didn't
think anything happened between my father and me. But when Jack was
born I just knew in my gut my father was responsible. A mother has
an intuition about these things. I never said anything to anyone
about this. My father was clueless and I left it that
way.

In a weird way I needed him to be close to
Jack. In the process of doing this I became dependent on him. When
he died all of this came back to haunt me. I don't want to fuck up
Jack’s life like my father fucked up mine. Despite the resentment I
have for my mother, I asked her to raise him. I asked her to make
sure he has a chance at life. Now it’s time for me to
rest.

My Wishes for My Death:

1. No keeping me alive on tubes, cutting off
   of anything.
   

2. Celebration of life after I am
   cremated.
   

3. Ashes are to be given to my daughter &
   she can decide how to handle this.
   

4. Do not weep for me, for I am a woman of
   faith and have made my peace and have been forgiven by Christ &
   my love of Mary, St. Dympha, St. Rita, and St.
   Michael.
   

5. My wishes are that you love one another as
   Christ has loved us.
   

6. Replace anger with forgiving your enemies,
   because you only hurt yourself by being angry.
   

7. The world is the opposite of the spiritual
   world. The Jewish Bible is read from back to front.
   

8. My body may have died, but my spirit lives
   on forever, and I will always be in your heart.
   

9. I loved all of you very much, and like the
   song ‘Purple Rain’, I never meant to cause you any sorrow, I only
   wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain.
   

10. May God in the name of Jesus, Mary &
    all the saints & angels bless you & all of the future
    generations in our family always.
    

11. I will always be with you in
    spirit.
    

12. A quote from Wayne Dyer: “Goodbye my past,
    I kissed it, hey kids, I wouldn't have missed it.”
    

13. Do not cry for me because I have gone back
    to the one that created me. I am in the arms of Christ, & with
    those that have just stepped over to another realm.
    

See you all on the other
side.

Love & Peace Always
Mom

Chapter
twenty-five

“Here, from her ashes you lay. A
broken girl so lost in despondency that you know that even if she
does find her way out of this labyrinth in hell, that she will
never see, feel, taste, or touch life the same again.”
~ Amanda Steele

Jack Napier - Day 49

After I got settled in with Grandma Daisy, I
was greeted with bad news. Grandpa Bob had a massive heart attack
and died unexpectedly. I immediately remembered the turkey in the
basement, sitting on his lap while he told me his war stories, and
the times we spent together at his AA meetings.

Grandpa Bob had been sober for many years. But
loneliness eventually snuck up on him. He didn't jump of a bridge
like Jim. Instead, he put a whiskey bottle in his mouth and like
pulling the trigger of a gun, he let it kill him. My mother was now
left with no one to take care of her.

My head filled with regret because once I left
Bloomington I never went back. Which meant I didn't have a chance
to see Grandpa Bob before he died. I felt horrible.

I was starting to withdraw, becoming invisible
to those around me. I tried to reconnect with Brooke but things
were so different between us now. It was nothing like it was when
we were in grade school.

I remember having a brief exchange with her
that put things in perspective. As usual when I saw her my face lit
up like a Christmas tree. When she told me all about how she got
accepted to Indiana University the lights flicker off. I would be
lucky to even graduate high school at that point, I thought to
myself. She didn't have to say it, I could see it in her expression
when she asked me what colleges I applied to.

"I'm thinking about taking a year off before I
start college," I replied, trying to cover up the fact I wasn't
sure I was going to even graduate high school. She told me she
thought that was great. But what I heard was, “You’re a loser,
Jack.”

I was sure Brooke would move on and I would
never see her again. The spark we had between us was now fading
into the shadows of my broken heart. Then came the knockout
blow.

Grandma was sitting at the dining room table
with her head in her hands when I got home. I could immediately
feel her sorrow as soon as I walked through the door. I saw pain
written across the wrinkles in her face. There were dark bags under
her eyes. I knew something was seriously wrong.

“
What is it, Grandma?" I
asked.

“
Jack, you better sit down...” she
murmured.

Sitting down in the chair across from her I
thought,
What could be so bad that I need to sit down?
Then
it dawned on me. There was only one person in the world that could
cause my grandmother that much grief. It couldn’t be anyone
else.

“
It’s your mother, Jack. She has
been burning her candle at both ends for years. It's finally caught
up with her.”

“
Is she..." My eyes grew large and
my stomach began to sour.

She gazed at me, years of pain and
disappointment rolling down her cheeks, smearing mascara all the
way to her chin. She slowly nodded her head, as if in slow motion.
I sat in disbelief.

“
How? How, Grandma?”

Grandma Daisy curled her chin into her chest
and looked down at the table.

“
They believe she overdosed on
methadone. However, it could have been a combination of a lot of
different drugs. Whatever it was, it caused her heart to stop. When
the paramedics tried to revive her, it was just too late. Her brain
was deprived of oxygen for too long. She is brain dead and they
want us to take her off of life support.”

Grandma Daisy reached across the table and
held my hand. The two of us just sat there as the sun sank into the
Earth, casting a blanket of darkness upon us.

I wasn’t sad at this point. I was shocked.
There were a thousand emotions running through my head. I was
angry, disappointed, and distressed that she couldn’t have just
been a regular mother.

Over the next couple of days, I spent a lot of
time at the hospital, talking with the doctors and reliving my life
with her.

There was nothing we could do to save her at
this point. My mother was brain dead. Grandma Daisy, my siblings,
and I all agreed the best thing to do was to take her off of life
support. We each took a turn alone in the room with her for a
private moment.

At first I didn’t want to say goodbye. She was
the cause of so many bad things that happened to me. What I
couldn't understand is why I cared so much?

At the last minute, I changed my mind. I
entered the room and looked at her lying lifeless in the tiny
hospital bed. She was on a breathing machine, with tubes and wires
on every part of her body. There was even one down her throat. All
at once, feelings that I did not even know I felt came flooding
out. I gently took her hand, then like a child I cried.

"I love you, Mom. I always have, but sometimes
you are a hard woman to love back. All I ever wanted was to feel
like you loved me. I'm sorry this has happened to you."

I sat on the bed beside my mother and held her
hand. I ran my fingers through her dark hair, remembering all of
the good things about her. The times we’d had together that I’d
totally forgotten about. Like how she would take me to the
Indianapolis Museum of Art and walk the grounds with me. I could
vividly remember holding her hand, skipping around signing Jiminy
Cricket's version of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” I leaned over and kissed
her on the cheek. I told her I loved her.

Walking out of the room, I stopped at the
doorway to look back. My emotions were at war. I avoided the rest
of my family and hid in the restroom long enough to wash my face
with cold water, trying to regain some kind of
composure.

When I returned to my mother’s room, everyone
was present and there was a nurse standing over her, preparing to
remove the respirator. The nurse explained that once removed, she
would only have a few minutes before her heart would stop beating
and she would be gone from us. She asked each of us if we
understood what was about to happen. We nodded in turn. She then
removed the respirator. We were all startled when Mother gasped for
air! Her face contorted in pain. Then there was a horrible,
bone-chilling moan.