Silence

The room was long and narrow, not much furniture and of a very white color, almost like the color of the coral sand outside the window. The sunlight danced off the sand and skipped along to the endless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, glinting and shimmering as it moved along the waves. My mind traveled with it for a brief instant.

“It means a great deal that you came to see me.”

Silence - for an instant my mind left my head. I looked over at the frail man lying in the bed at the end of the room, his view not of the ocean but of the silent television on the wall. Why do they always have televisions in these places?

“It is the least I could do,” I replied.

I struggled for words. How did this man, my father, come to the end of his life a frail man befallen by years of alcohol and drug addiction? How did this man, the son of wealthy merchants fall so low as to end up in absolute poverty, having to be rescued by the only family member who would pay any attention so that he, this frail man, would not end up dying on the streets of this tropical island. A paradise outside, but for him a slow end in a white room with a view.

My head did a slow burn. Calm down. I have this habit of talking to myself. No, it is more that I talk inside my head, a cacophony of noise and self doubt, an endless loop of unnecessary suffering. Almost delusional.

“I came to make sure that you were comfortable. The staff is hopeful that with proper rest and treatment you will be in rehab and back home at some point.”

Silence --- was he sleeping?

More burning in my head. It was all lies, crazy fucking lies. I knew that he was not leaving, that his kidneys and liver were failing and that he would never stand on his own two feet again. I knew that my family, my two “glorious” brothers and my mother would no sooner see him as to spit on his grave. Detest is too mild a word.

I moved towards that window with that incredible view. His head turned. “Am I in your light?” Silence.

I walked over that ocean, over those shimmering plates of glass.

Back to somewhere. Back into my head.

Fourteen years old - I am leaving here. I planned to leave my family. For months I had been plotting, stealing food and hiding it in my secret chest, the one of solid oak at the base of my bed. My “secret” world I called it.

It really was my secret world. My father and mother, he of merchants and she of incredible wealth had rejected me at birth due to my slightly olive hue. They could never have accepted a darker child into their world so they sent me off to another, to a separate house with my own cast - servants, cooks and my damaged mind. In this house I plotted my escape. Day by day, month by month.

“Do you know what happened to those tins of beans we bought the other day?” asked one of the servants.

Silence.

I basically had stopped talking to anyone. I had forced myself mute while my mind raged, an inner war of hatred against them all. I was going to escape to a better place. I convinced myself there was a world of endless expanse and happiness if I could just leave. The clanging in my head never stopped.

That Saturday night I was discovered for the first time. The servants were noticeably upset and didn’t know what to say.

"We didn’t mean to cause trouble, sir.”

Who calls a fourteen-year-old boy sir??

I was in the salon when I heard a terrible banging on the stairs. Each molecule of wood stirred with inner rage as a menace I had never before experienced ascended each wooden plank. The door was thrust open such that it almost broke off the molding and in he came, my father, a tornado of alcohol. He grabbed me by the collar and flung me across the room with such a force that my head hit the door of a nearby bookcase. The servants fled. Incoherent threats came pouring out. Round after round of pummeling on my chest and head until I had nearly passed out, more from relief that pain.

I am floating.

Walking across that water slowly, over a blue glass shimmering from within, illuminating my soul and lifting me up, up and up.

Am I dying?

Clanging in my head. I felt a force push me into a sofa as the one “glorious” brother, the only one in my family who actually cared about me raced in and pulled this madman off of me. He thrust him away and down the stairs tumbling backwards into his life as he said over and over, “I’ll kill him if he steals again.” The servants, visibly shaken, came back and stared. I don’t know what they were thinking.

Silence.

Too scared to do much of anything, they helped me to my bedroom and called a doctor. When he arrived he didn’t seem too much concerned. I am sure they told him that I had taken a bad fall and hit my head.

The patterns began to form, clouds all around me.

Days later I realized that I wasn’t able to swallow.

I woke up choking one morning and was unable to breathe. It wasn’t the same as when your throat is scratchy or irritated with sickness. I couldn’t swallow. A major panic attack ensued and the servants came rushing in.

More doctors. Psychiatrists and therapists. My mother, she of no concern, didn’t know what to do so she said “fix him. Whatever the cost.’”

Whatever the cost.

My mother, she of great wealth, lived a life of unimaginable extravagance. She breathed money. Unlike me she never had trouble breathing or swallowing. She was able to swallow whatever happened, and if it were bad she would make it into something great.

That seemed to be her guiding principal. Make it all work to the greatest advantage. I suppose that is what she tried to do when she married my father.

Being of great wealth she was, of course, matched to her equal, a man of wealth (although that was not really my father’s case). He was not of the same social standing and knew it. She obviously knew it as well and made him aware of it every day of their unhappy coexistence. She wore her superiority like a second handbag and carried it with style. In social settings she made sure that he was invited only when “his level” of person were present. “Nothing too high level until you are ready” she would tell him. He would mutter something quietly and seethe with resentment, accepting all the limitations she imposed on him. “A tyrant unparalleled,” he would tell me.

He, however, wasn’t able to swallow it all the same way. Their paths diverged in the worst way possible.

Grand ballrooms and couture, shoes tilted towards the sky. My mother was the married courtesan of her time. The music swelled all around her at every event and she became the beacon of light for every butterfly in her world. Her status grew until she was untouchable, her pedestal higher than all others. She relished the power and the dominance and became in the most subtle of ways a social dominatrix.

My father began to have difficulty swallowing it all as well. Their disconnection grew deeper and what he did swallow mainly came in bottled form. Slowly it began, after dinner drinks at the long table with the two “glorious brothers” and my mother. Silence. Then drinks at dinner. Silence. Then drinks in the salon. More silence.

I never heard them speak much to each other. My grandfather prized my mother more than anything else and called her Empress. In his and my grandmother's eyes she was regal. When the Empress married my father they were horribly opposed. Like me, he was of olive hue and they would never accept someone of that color into the family. And of course there was his weakened financial situation. How could that be sustainable? He was a merchant’s son after all. A worker.

His swallowing became worst. Not content to stay at home anymore he became his own version of a butterfly as my mother was souring even higher. Although his version was wounded and spiraling downwards.

His cravings became more depraved and he frequented the bars around town. He picked up all sorts of compromised creatures, one of whom had discovered the magic of this liquid, a clear elixir that could give the participant unparalleled pleasure. She was an incredible brunette with eyes that stared blankly from her core which exposed the rotting beating soul. He felt the “pum, pum, pum” of this inner beating and was sucked right into the rot. Irresistible. The first push of the needle was unlike anything he had ever experienced. One prick of the skin released a gush of intense pleasure that began pooling in his arm, burst through his body in torrents and ended in his head with a clanging that almost ripped his head off. And then:

Silence.

One, two, three, one two three, one, two, three...

The party continued, the waltz for my mother and the syringe for my father.

I finally escaped.

One July night I slipped out the door and was gone. No resistance, no nothing. I had stopped collecting food and resolved myself just to accumulate what I needed for the start of my journey. Some clothes, what money I could skim from my allowance and savings and most importantly, a plan. I was seventeen.

As my father deteriorated though the years the beatings intensified. Between the alcohol and drugs he had physically changed and no longer looked like himself. He was gaunt and lost the strength to do much damage so I was able to keep the worst of the abuse at bay. By that stage it was mostly verbal since each blow arrived diminished by half during his more than weekly visits. I started to feel pity as there were times he was so incapacitated that all he could do was sit with me in the room. It is as though I became his only companion and we became one. I looked on him with incredible sadness, a paralyzing grief that I cannot to this day comprehend. It was that day that a dark cloud descended from the heavens and enveloped me.

The day before I left my father visited me. This was unusual for him. By that time, he and my mother had basically stopped acknowledging each other and lived in separate parts of the house. She could not tolerate his very essence and the spiraling. He was now never invited anywhere with her and she was now a single courtesan.

We sat in the same room, that of the beatings and he asked me how I was. By that time I had begun, after endless therapy, to speak, albeit minimally.

“I am fine.”

He told me of his plans and I half listened, not sure of what was true. This was a man of great plans, most of which never lived beyond the imaginary stage. I sat there and stared at his ravaged physical frame, a bag of skin with big ideas. I started to cry. Not that he noticed. The room was dark and I realized he was having a hard time seeing. I moved my chair to allow more sunlight in.

“Am I in your light?” I asked.

I left. I began my life by going as far away as I could. I traversed the oceans to escape and ended up in places I had only imagined existed. New countries, new people and languages. I had to work since the money ran out and the mother of great wealth was no longer a part of my life. I was alone.

My mother eventually divorced my father and he deteriorated. Not that he had ever really recovered. We all lost touch and he continued to ride the substance train. At each stop more alcohol, drugs, whatever was available. She never spoke of him again. He was “disappeared.” My grandparents, long gone, had gotten their way.

I too started riding down in my own lift. At first it was incredible. I became my mother minus the grand ballrooms and couture. There was no social situation I couldn’t conquer provided I had a good dose of liquor. I was a star with all the attention that I could ever want. And I wanted more and more.

I became my father. More and more time spend waltzing had led to more blackouts and midnight ambulance runs. “Man collapsed on the street” came the ambulance calls. Had I been a passerby I would have looked in great empathy at the small figure crumpled in the street just beyond the curbside. Me.

Years passed and the ideas flowed --- more banging inside the head. Can’t stop it.

I finally arrived at the grandest party of them all, New York City. I continued my role as a socialite although without the proper backing. There were lots of fake socialites in New York, the kind with great clothes and no rent money. I felt like I was in good company. I was still a star. Until that one Saturday night.

I was at one of the most important events of my life with the potential to make life changing connections. I decided to grease the evening with a bit of pre-party partying (with no food, of course) and a stint at the bar across the street before going in. By the time I got to the party I was ready. Like a junkie on speed I ran from one contact to the other taking numbers and photos. They loved me! I am my mother.

“More champagne?” “Of course.”

I am my father.

All three of us partying and dancing, me the drunken courtesan in the middle, my mother on one arm, my father on the other, faster and faster, music spinning, dancing, spinning, more and more and more.

And then black.

I woke up in the hospital. During the party I had blacked out and fallen off an eight foot platform. There was no mother and father. Guests reported that I had jumped from a pedestal to the platform and was dancing all alone in some sort of a stupor as though I were on drugs. I never did drugs. Alcohol was devastation enough.

I left New York… the contacts were gone. It’s easy to lose it all. I moved back to London and did everything in my power to bring back the light. I was able to obtain help along the way and lived a modest life while I righted my ship. The banging continued with a diminished intensity like a slowly diminishing snare drum, rat a tat, rat - a - tat.

The months passed as the ship slowly pulled itself steady. I worked for a bit for a friend who had a charity. It was really all I could manage. Socializing was different now. Getting used to one’s presence without a substance halo around you is a difficult chore and became my full-time job.

And one day the phone call.

The woman on the other end of the line asked me if I knew this person who was collapsed on the streets of a particular tropical island. Me in another time zone, I mused. It was my father. It was me.

“Yes, he is my father.”

He ended up temporarily housed in a rehab facility as a charity case until the staff could figure out what to do with him.

“Can you help us?”

I didn’t know what to say since I could barely take care of myself let alone my father. I had no other option.

“Let me work on it”

A convoluted situation evolved that involved the power of my wealthy mother to heal the wrongs of the past. I found myself on a plane traveling to my past, to the beatings, the alcoholism and torture that was my early life.

As I floated above the clouds the cloud that had descended before I left home started to slowly lift. I watched from my seat above the clouds as the dark layer lifted above the white. I felt it in my body, in my being and the clanging in the head slowed.

I landed. When I arrived at the rehab I realized how bad things had gotten. He was in horrible shape, almost unrecognizable. The intervening years had destroyed his spirit and body. There was nothing left. Nothing. He reached his thin hand out to me and said that he was so happy to see me. I am not sure if he was happy for that reason or for the help but by that time it didn’t matter. There were things to be done.

I sold all his assets and guaranteed his care for lifetime, a small piece of dignity at the end of an undignified life. He knew nothing of this and continued to make big plans, plans articulated in barely a whisper as that was all he had left. I went along with it all as I recognized the pattern.

I spent months with him and got to know him again. He seemed different and rarely mentioned the past. He asked about my mother and I told him all was well. They had no desire to see him. He had been disappeared.

That July, many years after my fateful July some years ago we sat in his room. It was not a good day. He was having a great deal of difficulty breathing -- the staff did what they could. I knew the reality, he didn’t. I played along, anticipating his post rehab life.

The room that day seemed a little dark so I moved over to the window to open the curtain a bit more.

“Am I in your light?”

I pushed the bed a bit closer to the window.

“Look Father at the diamonds shimmering on the ocean!”

We both stared in silence. The bed was blocking half of the window. He asked again, “Am I in your light?”

I paused for a bit before I answered. “No, not anymore.”