| RUNNING ON EMPTY BY TORRI |
CHAPTER 47 |
Todd never really thought about why he poisoned himself. It was too slow of a death, taking a gun and ending it all would have been so much quicker. Part of his need for it, was to be transported to a happier place, but that wasn't all of it nor was it an automatic guarantee. Sometimes it took him lower than he thought possible, making him see, not just hear the demons around him. They whispered, shouted, taunted him about his past. He was their puppet, always at their mercy. He knew the damage he was doing to his body and didn't particularly care. And there was the possibility that he could get Tea back in his life. She was there with him, and usually around whenever he needed her.
As he gazed across the table at her face, his feelings of unworthiness increased. With the pale white light surrounding her, she looked like a being straight from heaven. Only thing that was missing were the wings that she would earn by saving his hopeless self. Her eyes reeked of understanding, telling him that everything was going to be okay.
"Todd, don't be sarcastic okay? I asked you a serious question and I want a serious answer. Why are you doing this to yourself?" She didn't sound angry with him, but he could tell by the way she twisted her bracelet that she wanted to. He missed her argumentative nature, missed the way she called him on every attempted lie or denial, except that one that destroyed his only chance at happiness.
"You don't understand-"
"Understand what? Make me understand Todd. Do you have any idea how much it would hurt your daughter and me if you died at your own hands? I don't think you do because if you did, you wouldn't do this to yourself."
He reached for a napkin and began ripping it into shreds. "Tea, it's so hard being here alone. There's nothing for me to do, no one comes to see me, nobody talks to me - it's my only friend. You know, back when we were together, I didn't understand how lucky I was to have you and Starr and Viki, and even though everybody else hated me, at least they'd talk to me. They could drown out the voices."
She felt sad for him. As many friends as she had in Llanview, she often felt very much alone. She could identify with what he was speaking of, though in a different sense. She never felt like she belonged in Llanview, not at the County Club or the Palace, sometimes not even at Carlotta's diner, it was only with him when she felt like she was truly and unconditionally accepted. He was, in many ways, her only friend too. At least the only person she could drop her guard around. She put her hand on top of his, taking the napkin away from him. "What voices? I thought the DID was fake?"
"It is. It was - whatever. I don't want to talk about this. I want to talk about you-"
"We'll talk about me later. We're talking about you right now. Don't do this, Todd. Don't shut down on me," she pleaded.
He yearned to tell her about the nightmares that had gotten far more severe since she hadn't been there to soothe him. There were so many things he wanted to say to her, about Peter teasing him every second of the day except when he was high and sometimes even then. He didn't speak, only looked down into the empty space of the table between them. There was so little space between them, but so much distance. Sighing loudly, he pulled his hand back from her and started shredding napkins again.
That's right Toddie, don't tell that bitch one word. If you say anything, if you tell, I will fucking kill you! Do you understand me boy?
"Stop it! Leave me a fucking lone!"
Thinking he was speaking to her, Tea jumped up from the table and started to leave. "You haven't changed. You are incapable of changing. I don't know why I even bother trying to talk to you-"
"Wait, Tea, where are you going? Don't go. Please, don't do this," he desperately begged.
"I'm not going to do this. I am not going to sit here, offer to listen to you, to be there for you and have you shut down yet again. That was the main problem in our relationship, your inability or unwillingness or whatever the hell it was, to open up to me. I'm going through my own shit right now, and the last thing I need is to be playing games with you. You don't want to talk about it - fine. Then don't talk about it BY YOURSELF!"
"Wait, Tea, don't go. Okay, I'll talk to you. Just not here, okay? I don't want to talk in front of all these people."
You're dead!
"Where do you suggest we go?"
Todd's Apartment
It was Todd's idea to go back to his place, instead of somewhere more neutral. After she left, traces of her essence would remain and that's what he was counting on. It would be easier to live alone if only there was a little bit of her that remained behind. She was strong. She could help combat the evil that lurked within his walls.
She didn't hesitate when he suggested going to back his apartment. She would follow him to the ends of the earth and they both knew it. She had to unlock the doors as he couldn't seem to get the key into the hole. She had to turn on the lights and walk him over to the couch. At the café, he seemed more in control and more lucid, but as soon as they left and she saw his eyes more clearly, she realized it was all an act. His "highness" seemed to dissipate, but it left something behind in its wake. An unidentifiable something that seemed to zap him of all his energy.
She helped him take off his jacket and shoes, the more comfortable he felt, the more he would tell her. She did the same, took off her jacket and shoes, folding her legs beneath her. It was too quiet in there for the both of them, with nothing to fill the silences, it could only make them more uncomfortable.
He followed her with his eyes as she walked over to his CD collection. Flipping through his collection, she realized that in all the time they spent together, she never really knew what kind of music he listened to. She had imagined him being a rock fan, something with a hard edge. Yet, as she looked, she found he had a wide range of music in his collection. Near the bottom, she stumbled across a Sarah McLachlan album. She held her breath as she turned the case over and found "their" song listed.
She thought about their wedding night and how they came so close to making love, physically. They made love time and time again emotionally, but never physically. She wondered if he would have stopped like he had so many times before. Something told her that he wouldn't have. He was ready that night, they both were, and with the playing of that damned tape, their world blew apart. She took it out of its case and turned it over to the shiny silver side. There were worn marks all over the surface; he'd listened to it often. She wanted to listen to it, but decided against bringing back the painful memories. Instead, she put in Wynton Marsalis, pressed the "Play" button and let sweet sounds of jazz work their magic.
She joined him back on the couch, sitting just close enough to touch him, but far enough away so their bodies weren't in contact. "Okay, you've got me, so tell me what's going on."
"I don't know what's going on with me. I mean, the nightmares, you know how I used the have them right?"
"Yes."
"I don't just have them when I'm sleeping now. I have them all the time and when I've had a little to drink or a little to smoke, they sometimes go away."
"Todd, you can't depend on those things to make you feel better. You need to talk about them, with a professional, that's the only way you're going to move past what happened to you in your childhood."
"I don't want to talk about it to a stupid 'professional.' I don't wanna talk about it at all."
"I know you don't," she said softly, reaching out and covering his hand with hers, "but you're going to kill yourself Todd. What happened to you was more than any person should have to go through in their entire lifetime, but it happened. It's really fucked up, but it happened. You are destroying your life by not dealing with it. Look what it's caused you already." She found herself questioning how she could lecture him about dealing with his "issues" when she was running from her own. How she could talk about dealing, when she compartmentalized all of her feelings, just as he had done his whole life.
"I know, but I'm not like you. I can't talk about things like you can. I'm not strong like you are, Delgado."
"Todd, I'm not strong. I am just like you, I hurt, I hide things, I shove things down deep inside me and I have my own secrets."
For a long time, they listened to the music without speaking. The tension needed time to dissipate into thin air. There always was a lot of silence between them, even when they were married. But it was more of a silence between two people who knew each other too well to need words. It was comfortable, though they couldn't see it back then.
She watched him from the corner of her eyes, leaning his head back and beginning to fall asleep. She didn't want to disturb that peacefulness that finally seemed to overtake him.
"Hey, Tea."
She jumped a bit, pulled away from her own thoughts. "Yeah?"
"Tell me one of your secrets."
Her mind started swirling at his request. Her trepidation had little to do with not trusting him, anything she said to him would remain locked inside forever. There were just too many secrets she kept, all of which would hurt him if he knew. There were times she thought that maybe she could share a bigger part of herself with him, and when she decided she would share something with him, things went wrong. They were at a decent place of communication. Opening old wounds would only make it worse.
"Tea?"
"I'm thinking."
This time, it was he who grasped her hand and lifted her chin up with the other. He wanted to see her eyes, to make her look at him so his eyes could tell her what his lips couldn't. "No fair. I told you something so now it's your turn."
"My mother abandoned us on this date. Actually, it was yesterday's date so I've been wandering around ever since." If she blinked, a stream of tears would have fallen down her cheeks, so she didn't. She stared at him wide-eyed and strong, refusing to show any emotion.
Seeing her fight her emotions bothered him. He used to be about the only person she would show emotion around. Her emotion filled stare made it painfully obvious that she had lumped him into the same category as everyone else. Those people she used to complain about, how they treated her like she was less than garbage and had to put on her armor just to be around them. She was wearing her armor with him too.
"You happy now?" It was a rhetorical question; he would never be happy, not with her, not with anyone else. He was too cut off from the rest of the world, hated himself too much.
Happy? He didn't even know what that was. In his life, it had been nothing more than a few fleeting moments here and there, but he never recognized them as being such until it was too late. He noticed how she refused to look at him, instead choosing to focus on a fingernail whose polish was slightly chipped. She peeled away at it, until it was void of polish and all that was left was the white of her nail.
He thought of her "chipping away at his heart." She poked and prodded and peeled until she reached his most vulnerable parts and she loved every single layer of him. No one would ever get that close to him again. No one would ever love and accept him the way she always had.
"What are you thinking about?" She asked, twisting loose thread on her shirt. She realized that in all the time they were married, she could count on one hand the number of times that sat around and just talked. Talked without outside interference, talked without holding back. It was as if they almost reached a place of friendship, maybe not that far, but at least they were beyond tolerance. She smiled, realizing how much it meant to her to be in his company.
"Why are you smiling, Delgado?" He couldn't help but to smile right along with her, it always had been infectious.
"I was just thinking about how we couldn't hold a conversation without arguing and now look at us. It's just weird."
"Can I ask you something about your mom?"
"Sure."
"Do you know why she left? I mean, did she leave a note or anything? 'Cause my mom, she left a 'Goodbye Todd' note, but she didn't tell me why she was leaving."
"Yes she did, but I didn't keep that one. She wrote another letter to me that I received after she died. She wrote that it wasn't my fault, but, sometimes, I still think it is. Do you go through the same thing?"
"Yeah. I just don't understand, you know? It's different because people can lie with letters, but they can't lie as easy when they're looking you in your face. I still wake up wanting to talk to her, you know, ask her why she left me with that sonofabitch."
Tea wanted to ask her mother the same thing, and oftentimes, she found herself praying to her mother. Telling her all about her life as if she couldn't look down, or look up, and see it for herself. Her mother's ghost was the only thing she had during her lowest moments.
She spoke to her mother about Todd all the time. Especially when they were married and everyone in town thought he was a bastard. Her mother was the only person she could let inside her heart. AnnaRosa was the first person she told she was in love with Todd. The first person she told she would give anything in the world to be loved by him. The first person she told her desire to have a future with him. She understood very well the urge to talk to someone so long gone and so far away.
"I talk to my mami all the time. I think it's only natural that we would wonder why our mother's left us."
"What do you talk to her about?"
"Whatever's going on in my life. I talked to her all the time about you."
He closed his eyes, both wanting to know and dreading what Tea had said about him. Mothers always hated him, his long hair, his cocky attitude, they warned their daughters to stay away from him. Selfishly, for one moment, he was glad her mother wasn't around to "disapprove" of him. Otherwise, they may never have had the little time that was allowed to them.
Tea, with the back of her hand, brushed a few errant strands of hair out of his face, brought her hand beneath his chin and forced him to look up at her. When he opened his eyes, they glistened with the shine of unshed tears. She loved him more at that moment than she ever had. "She would have loved you, Todd. She would have loved you so much. I told her that you were the best thing to ever happen to me and I have never regretted a moment we spent together."
"We both know I was the worst thing to ever happen to you. I'm so sorry for hurting you. I'm so sorry for dragging you into my life. You're much better off without me."
She didn't deny it. Life had been more calm without his smother, all consuming, passionate, noose-like love that choked everything out of her. But the longer she was without him, the more she realized that his love was all she really wanted in life. The career, everything outside of him meant less than it did with him.
It wasn't hard loving him, it was hard trying not to love him. It was an impossible task. As they talked, the sun rose outside, bringing the sounds of a new dawn with it. She didn't want to leave him, for just as much her comfort as his. She didn't want to walk outside into that world of bitterness, lies, deceit, backstabbing. Safe was in his presence. Love was in the air surrounding them, wrapping them in its radiance.
He silently chastised himself for not confiding in her sooner. Maybe they never would have ended up apart if he had only trusted her enough to share his secrets. It was so simple, telling the truth, opening his mouth and letting the words trickle off his tongue. She didn't judge him, didn't look at him like a stranger; it was the exact opposite. Love came pouring out of her, blending with the love he felt for her.
