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Chapter 14
The alcohol had lost its affect, his body no longer floated in that dreamy, narcotic numbness that he sought, only the excruciating pain of missing his children and his wife remained, like the lingering soreness of a deep wound that wouldn’t heal. Stumbling around the penthouse he paced from one place to another with no clear direction looking at the phone that wouldn’t ring and watching the door that wouldn’t open. Sitting on the penthouse steps he looked out at the city and beyond the city limits toward Windsor Lake, wondering how they were…and what they were doing…
Learning to be alone again had proved more difficult than he had anticipated…he didn’t know how to do it anymore. Sleeping without Tea beside him was impossible and awakening without his children nearby was unbearable as if vital appendages had been forcefully removed from his body but he still felt them there…a paraplegic with a long memory.
Hearing the key turning in the lock, Todd stood up and prepared himself for another visit from Dr. Woolf. When the door opened, Tea walked in, closing the door softly behind her.
She was wearing a black suit and her light-brown hair fell softly over her face as she leaned over, placing her purse on the desk and looking up at him with her beautiful dark eyes. The freshness of her presence filled the room and came to him like a clean breeze on an airwave, arousing his senses and lifting his depressed spirit from the darkness, from the stale stench of alcohol that surrounded him.
Tea approached him.
“I know what happened,” she said carefully. “I saw Starr, today.”
Todd just stood there trembling, her knowing amplifying the reality of what transpired and suddenly, burying his face in his hands, he began to sob uncontrollably as Tea ran to him and took him into her arms. He collapsed against her and she lead him slowly toward the sofa as he continued to cry…and she cried with him as his pain entered her body, allowing his sorrow to fill her like some empathic vessel that could temporarily hold his agony and give him respite from his suffering. It felt like a blood-letting as he jerked and squirmed against her, the stagnant anguish that festered in his body for weeks oozing slowly out of him, draining slowly, until, finally, he was empty…and still.
After a few minutes Tea looked down at him and realized he was sound asleep against her…quiet and peaceful. Pulling the woolen throw from the back of the sofa over his body, she made herself comfortable and closed her eyes.
* * * * *
Tea looked up at the clock, her body stiff and aching from holding Todd in the same position for hours as he slept. Her fingertips traced the contours of his gaunt, pale face and prickly beard, the dark shadows under his eyes revealing long nights of violent insomnia. His clothing smelled musty and sweaty and the smell of old scotch clung to his pallid skin. So many times in their past she’d seen him this way…weary and wasted, scarred and bleeding, completely ravaged from doing battle with his imaginary demons.
She loved him…this manic-depressive, man-child…this penitent rapist…this accidental murderer and tortured being, so full of rage, remorse and human frailty, but, after all this time, she also resented him for giving in so easily to the ghosts from his past…their hold on him stronger than anything she could offer, once again reduced to envying his devils and vying with them for his soul.
Todd awakened but didn’t move, unwilling to part from her.
“How is she?” he asked, through closed eyelids.
“Confused,” said Tea.
“She’s afraid of me. I disgust her.”
“She only knows what Blair told her. You need to talk to her…to try and explain.”
“I…don’t know how? I…don’t want to explain it to her. I don’t want her to know.”
“Well…it’s too late, Todd. She knows…and you can’t go back. You have to deal with it.”
Todd got up, his anger suddenly flaring.
“Now you sound like Dr. Woolf. I don’t want to deal with it! I just want it all to go away!”
Tea shot up, walking toward him.
“Stop this! We always knew this day would come.”
Todd ran his hands through his greasy, long hair and looked away.
“I know…but, I’m not ready…she’s not ready.”
Tea sighed deeply and turned away, her patience slowly disintegrating.
“Well…what do you intend to do, shut yourself up in here forever and drink yourself to death? Or do you intend to take this show on the road and pick up some hooker in a bar to make you forget?” Tea snapped, her tone dripping with suppressed rage.
Todd looked up at her, then looked away casting his eyes toward the floor.
“Tea…I…I’m so sorry. I didn’t even remember…until the next day,” he said, his voice shaking.
“I wish I couldn’t remember,” she said bitterly, her eyes welling up with tears as she looked up at him, her face in anguish.
He walked closer to her but she backed away from him.
“You can’t think that meant anything…Tea…please. It was nothing.”
Tea flew at him.
“You were unfaithful to me! Do you think that means NOTHING?”
“Unfaithful? That’s ridiculous…I was so drunk I don’t even know who I was with or how I got outside. Tea…please…Starr already hates me…I can’t take any more…not from you. I didn’t betray you.”
“YES…YES, YOU DID!” she screamed. “But…not with that woman. I know that you were out of your mind and drunk…though, I can tell you that knowledge hardly lessens the pain for me, the pain of seeing you…like that…with someone else, but…I’m talking about Blair. That’s who you betrayed me with.”
Tea wiped her eyes, trying hard to control the flood of anger that was struggling to crack through the surface of her self-control.
“No! I never betrayed you with Blair! That’s not true.”
“Oh, yes, you did. You betrayed me…Starr…Alma…all of us. Blair’s words have more power, more validity with you, than all my love and the love of your children combined. You could have told her to go to hell…and just walked away…back to me and to our life, but, instead of coming to me…of sharing the burden of your pain with me, you…did exactly what she wanted. You didn’t even think enough of us to put up a fight…you just rolled over for her. You destroyed our life…our family, in order to prove to yourself that everything she said about you was true, so that you could wallow in your own self-pity and not have to deal with what happened. Just like she knew you would. She played you….and you let her win! And…to be perfectly honest, I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that…for giving us up so easily.”
“EASILY! Do you think this has been easy for me?”
“YES! It’s always easier to run away…than to stay and fight, Todd!”
Todd turned his back on her like a coward…knowing she was right.
“DON’T YOU DARE TURN AWAY FROM ME,” she said, yanking him around so that he faced her. “How could you just sacrifice all of us like this? What is the matter with you?”
“Tea…how can I fight this? STARR KNOWS! I can’t win here. Blair…she held the trump card all along…and me…I was just too stupid to see it. I never…ever thought she’d use Starr like that…to get at me.”
“That woman is capable of anything…I see that now. She’s a monster! Her vindictiveness has consumed her…she’s Medea…slaughtering her own child just to hurt you and satisfy her own gall. You were right not to trust her…and I was wrong to give her the benefit of the doubt…I clearly admit that now. But…I hate that she has this power over you.”
“Blair has no power over me!”
“Yes…she does. Her hatred means more to you than my love…it has more strength, more meaning. That’s the betrayal I can’t come to terms with, Todd,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I thought you were happy with me.”
“I was…more than you’ll ever know…but…maybe, it wasn’t real…maybe it was just another fairytale.”
“DON’T YOU DARE CALL OUR LIVES A FAIRYTALE! Maybe that’s what it was for you…but not for me. We have a child…is she a fantasy too? I hate when you’re like this. You’ve let Blair poison everything…she’s made you doubt everything. All the work we’ve done…everything we’ve shared means nothing to you? How dare you compare our life to that sick, twisted fairytale you played out with Blair! Well…fine. Stay here…because…I’m leaving,” she said, walking over to the desk and picking up her bag.
Todd ran toward her.
“NO! Please wait…don’t go…don’t leave me,” he begged.
Tea winced as she headed for the door, her heart in an agonizing turmoil…begging her to stay.
“I have a life to return to! I have a daughter to think about, Todd…this isn’t just about me! I’m an adult…and I have to go out there and deal with what’s happened. Unlike you, most of us don’t have the luxury of using our past to avoid facing reality. Not all of us have a penthouse to run to and escape to…to shut ourselves off from the world. You go ahead, Todd…go right back into your dark cave and lick your wounds while the rest of us pick up the pieces. I thought you’d grown stronger than that…with me…I thought my love gave you strength, but…now I see it’s done nothing. You’re not the man I love…you’re the man Blair says your are.”
Tea opened the door.
“I am tired of trying to convince you that you’re not that monster that your father made you believe you were. It’s quite obvious that my love holds no weight with the grand opinions of Peter Manning or Blair. Maybe…you belong with her, Todd. Perhaps she is the right woman for you after all since you seem to be her puppet…doing her bidding. You allowed Peter Manning to define you for years…now it is Blair. Well…go on back to her…I’m sure she’d take you and your Lord millions back in an instant! And who knows…maybe…just maybe, if you crawl around enough she’ll throw some scraps of love your way. And…if you beg enough, maybe she’ll even let you see Starr now and again…when it pleases her. Yes…go back to Blair…and be the man she thinks you are…the man you believe yourself to be.”
Tea walked out and closed the door behind her leaving him standing in the center of the livingroom…reeling. Tears filled his eyes as he stumbled over to the bar blindly and poured himself a whisky, filling it to the top of the glass…her words and disappointment still ringing in his ears. He brought the glass to his lips, his nostrils inhaling the strong smell of his medicine, but his hand was trembling, his reason struggling with his self-loathing, and he could not drink it. Suddenly he threw the glass at the fireplace and listened to the sound of the shattering glass…listened as all the pieces of his life shattered and fell into the dying flame…and burned. Walking slowly toward the staircase, he sat down, delirious, shaking and defeated. Lying back across the stairway he stretched out his arms and closed his eyes…as the dark harpies in his mind swooped down for another feeding.
“Come and get me, you bastards…just finish me off,” he whispered.
2003 Copyright by Trog
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