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On good days like this one, at any rate.
“I’d like to meet her, Ruin.” She smiles up at me. “She must be special for you to put so much effort into finding her.”
“It’s Rogue,” I remind her gently. She’s probably tired and starting to get confused.
“It is?” She blinks and those bright blues dull. She glances around like she’s searching for something she’s lost. “I…I…I don’t know.”
“It’s okay, Mom.” I squeeze her hand as my throat constricts. It breaks my heart seeing her like this. When she’s present like she was it makes it a thousand times harder to watch her fade back into her darkness. It’s the worst feeling in the world; loving someone and not being able to do anything but watch them leave you over and over and over again. Not being able to help them. “Maybe you thought I was Rebel. Or Riot.”
“No.” She yanks her hand out of mine and starts to fidget as her gaze wilds over lawn and trees and sky. She plucks at the air with her hands. Ducks as though avoiding something only she can see. “Yes, he was supposed to be here. He said he would be here. He has to come. He told me—”
“Mom, it’s okay. It’s me, Rogue. I’m your son.” I try to keep the emotions clogging my throat from leaking into my words. They claw at my chest, though, wrap around my heart and draw blood.
“No. No. You’re not him.” She backs away from me as though I’m a monster. “You’re the devil.”
It wouldn’t be the first time she cowered from me because she had a hallucination and thought I was some kind of winged and horned demon spawn. As much as it sucks, I prefer it to the alternative.
I was fifteen the first time she tried to stab me and send me back to hell. Between Rebel and me we managed to quarantine her to the safety of her bedroom until we could get a doctor to see her. He sedated her and said he would call someone to get us moved into foster care. Rebel told him we were eighteen. Our height and build helped cement that lie.
I was sixteen when she tried to light me on fire with part of the drapes from her bedroom and a chair leg. She fought me tooth and nail as I pried that makeshift weapon from her hand. I never did tell Rebel about that.
There were other moments too when her mind took over her reality. We survived them, until Rebel got his first movie role, and then we could look after her the way she needed. That was when we sent her here to the retreat.
I rub my thumb across the inside of my palm. The physical scarring she managed to inflict over the years was minimal. The emotional shit hurts so fucking much more.
I lumber to my feet as she continues to talk to someone who isn’t there. Someone who isn’t me. I should be used to it, but it never gets easier.
I gesture at one of the orderlies patrolling the ground and they veer off the path towards us. It’s the same guy who treated Ivy for her broken nose.
“How are we doing today, Betty?” Oscar asks as he kneels in front of my mother. They’re used to her comatose moods and her breakdowns. They know how to handle her when I don’t. It should bring me relief. Instead I feel completely helpless.
“He wants to hurt me. He’s going to hurt me.” She screams at the air as she shakes a finger at me.
Oscar glances up at me. “That’s your son, Betty. He came to celebrate your birthday with you.”
“No. He…he didn’t come. He was supposed to be here.”
“I’m going to go.” I’m barely holding myself together. If there were a demon in me, it would be the savage need to break something right now.
“It’s probably for the best,” Oscar agrees as he helps my mom to her feet. “We’re going to go inside and have a rest, aren’t we, Betty?”
I clasp my hands on top of my head as I watch them walk away.
“He has to come.” My mom’s voice is thick with agitation as he manhandles her toward one of the entrances. Sometimes she doesn’t go so easily. She’s clocked more than one orderly in her time here. At least this time she hasn’t needed to be sedated just to get her back to her room.
Maybe Rebel and Riot have the right idea, staying away. Compartmentalizing the bad years and moving on. What’s the point in continuing to try when I can’t reach her? Why come here when all it does is make me feel like shit?
I stride blindly through the facility. I can’t keep doing this. It doesn’t help my mom. It’s not like I’ll show up one day and we’ll have been transported back almost two decades. She will never again be the mom who dashed through an obstacle course made of couch cushions in order to escape the lava on the floor. That woman has been gone for a long time. I’ve accepted it but like an idiot I’m still hanging on… for what?
Perhaps I’m just too stubborn for my own good. I don’t know when to give up on something that isn’t working.
I yank open the door to the Jeep and climb up. Across the road my photographer friend stands with his camera in his hands, but he doesn’t lift the lens. It’s almost as if he knows I’d put my fist through his face in my present state of mind.
It’s a little odd for one of these gossip loving pricks, but this one seems to have a moral compass beyond that of the everyday variety photographer. Actually… it’s downright weird. But then he was there the night Rebel was charged with assaulting Hawthorne the first time.
So he has a healthy respect for life then. Or at least for his own. I acknowledge that regard with a head jerk as I start the vehicle and let the soothing sounds of L.A. Riot’s latest hit wash over me as I drive out of the parking lot. It’s drum heavy. Clashing. Crashing. Screaming. Sometimes it blows my mind that my brother is such a Zen fucker in the everyday, but he bleeds gravelly emotion all over the place in L.A. Riot’s songs.
My phone starts to blow up, no doubt my brothers wanting to check on me after my visit with Mom. But I don’t respond as I drive to the one place I always go when a visit with my mom goes sideways.
