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  My mother looked up to me with stormy gray eyes, “My sweet boy. I thought you left me again.”

  A heavy sigh escaped me, “No mom, I just went to get some food. Why don’t you come sit at the table, and I’ll fix you a plate.” Moving into the kitchen, I unbagged the food I had picked up from the local diner. I didn’t feel well enough to cook, so I figured this would save us all some time and frustration. Lyle helped my mother to the table. She was looking even rougher than she did the day before, wrapped up in a big blanket with used tissues in her fisted hand.

  Piling her plate with silver dollar pancakes and sides, I also placed her daily dose of pills on the plate. Moving over to the table, I set her plate down in front of her and passed Lyle a plate as well. Immediately her eyes focused on the small pile of orange, blue, and white pills. Her eyes were terrifyingly wide as she leaned her face in close to the plate as her skinny fingers plucked the pills from the plate. “What are these, Jason? What are these?” she questioned me in a panic, thrusting the pills towards my face.

  “It’s your medicine, mom. You need to take it so that you can function a little better. Don’t you want to make things easier on Lyle and me?” I asked her as calmly as I could.

  Her beady gray eyes locked onto me, “Y-you’re trying to poison me, aren’t you?”

  “What? Mom, no.” Walking over to the counter, I grabbed the pill bottles and paced back over to her. “See? These bottles have your name on them. I took one from each and gave them to you. They aren’t poisonous.”

  “That’s what you want me to think!” she snapped, slamming her fist down on the table.

  “Mama, you’ve been taking these medications for years,” Lyle chimed in, reaching across the table and placing a hand over hers. “Jason isn’t going to hurt you. He’s only trying to help.”

  “He wants to poison my mind, Lyle,” my mother tried to reason with my brother. “Those pills dull my reality. He doesn’t want me to feel anything. He just wants me to live in some medicated bubble where he can control me. Jason hates your father oh so much, but he’s just like him.” With a flick of the wrist, she threw the pills at my face.

  Something snapped in me. I swung my arm and knocked a glass from the table into the floor, it shattering into a million pieces on impact. “I am nothing like him. How dare you compare me to him!” I screamed at her. My hands were shaking with how deeply she had angered me. If you get pissed, that won’t prove to her you are nothing like him, I thought to myself. Covering my face with my hands, I took a couple of deep breaths before lowering them and looking to my mother. She was frozen in a look of sheer terror. “I’m sorry I did that. I shouldn’t have. But mom, you were just crying about how you thought I had left you. You can’t expect me to hang around if you’re going to treat me like this. That’s another reason why you need to take your medicine.”

  Her head shook back and forth violently. “You don’t care about me, you don’t care about me, you don’t care about me!” And with that, she dashed back up the stairs. My blood was starting to boil. My mother was all over the place when she was off her medication. How in the world was I supposed to talk her to about going into state care when she wouldn’t even listen to me about taking her medicine?

  “Don’t take it too personally,” Lyle called over to me, “She went off them a week ago. I’ve been trying to get her to take them ever since. You know she goes through these rebellious spells.”

  “Well now isn’t exactly the most ideal time for her to be rebellious,” I grumbled.

  “I know,” Lyle sighed. “And I know it’s hard, but try and stay patient with her. Bossing her around will result in nothing but her resisting even more.”

  He was right about that, I knew that. Our mother had never responded well with being told what to do. She had to feel like she was making decisions on her own accord or else she would refuse to cooperate. Her being off her medication for so long, it was going to make it even more challenging to get her to start taking them again. “You’re right,” I sighed.

  Grabbing her plate of food and a fork, I headed upstairs. There was no way I was going to be able to get anything done that day if she was having episodes all day, I had to somehow convince her to take her medicine. Knocking lightly on the door, I called through the door, “Can I please come in?”

  “Are you going to be mean to me?” she retorted.

  “No. I promise I won’t be.” There were a few seconds of silence, so I took her lack of protest as a yes. Opening the door, I moved into the room. As usual, she was in the fetal position on the bed. Moving over to the bed, I sat on the edge and nudged her with my elbow, “Look, no pills. I just want you to eat. Will you eat for me?”

  Her pale face peeked out from the blanket she had wrapped around herself. Her steel hues searched my face for any hint of deception. Then, she slowly sat up, keeping the blanket tight around her. Handing her the plate, she put it on her lap before taking tiny bites of the already bite-sized pancakes. I let out a shaky breath. Well, at least she was eating. Her eyes lifted back to me, this time glimmering with happiness, “Thank you, Jasy.”

  Jasy. She hadn’t called me that since I was really little. I gave her a nod and she continued to eat, but my eyes took in her appearance. With how stressful it was to be around her, I had honestly let myself forget she was my mother and not just a burden. Did that make me a horrible person? The realization definitely felt shitty. It wasn’t like my mom was evil and vile as my father had been. Hell, she wasn’t even bad… she was just not all there. I couldn’t help but wonder what her mind was like. How did her wiring get so messed up that she had come undone? Had she always been this far gone, but the medicine just helped mask it or had she truly gotten worse?

  I had always wondered when her condition started. Asking her would get you a different answer every time, and she had already been unwell when my father met her. Specialists couldn’t even rule out genetic factors because she had been raised in foster care and therefore had no family history. Even after a lifetime of abuse, mental illness, and pills, my mother still had a good heart. It wasn’t like it was her fault she had gotten dependent on my father. He loved having control over people, especially my mother. She was impressionable enough for even an addict to manipulate.

  For the first time ever, I felt bad for leaving my mom behind. My throat dried at the realization. Even in recent years, I had been too immature to let go of misplaced anger I had for my mother. All my life, she had been to blame just as much as my father in my mind. As far back as I could remember, she had never stood up for Lyle or me when he would beat us in intoxicated rages. I held so much resentment for the both of them that I never thought about her being afraid. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind because he hadn’t laid a hand on her since I was just a kid, unless it was to restrain her. But just because he didn’t hit her anymore, didn’t mean she wouldn’t be afraid of his aggression being turned on her in other ways. With how dependent my mom was on him, she had probably been silenced by the fear of him leaving her. What would she have done without him? My teenage self had been kicked around too much to care much about anyone else but myself. I had been selfish, but was I really to blame for that? Was it really so wrong to get away from so much toxicity? Why should I have guilt for looking out for my own well-being?

  “Mom? Can I ask you something?” I asked her softly, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. I needed to refocus on the task at hand.

  “What’s that, baby boy?” she asked, looking to me with a brilliant smile.

  “I am not trying to be mean, and I’m not going to force you to do something you don’t want to do. I just want to know so that I can help you… Why did you stop taking your medicine?”

  She averted her gaze, a deep frown pulling at her lips. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Mom, you need to tell me… I promise I won’t be mad at you,” I tried to plead lightly. I didn’t want to push her too far, but I needed t
o get to the root of the problem if I was going to be able to get her well enough that week to talk to her about putting her in state-funded assisted living.

  “Jason. I said I don’t want to,” she said firmly.

  “Alright, I’m sorry. I’ll drop it,” I told my mom.

  “Thank you.”

  Silence fell between us as she finished her food. I just didn’t know what to say to her. If I couldn’t talk about her condition, getting her in a home, or the men that were after me, then I just didn’t have anything to say. When she took her last bite, I took the plate from her. I could already tell by the look on her face that the big breakfast had made her sleepy. “Would you like me to leave you alone so you can nap?” I asked, being careful to word it in a way that didn’t sound like I was instructing her to do so. It would be nice to have a couple of hours of silence to search for the drugs.

  My mom let out a long yawn, patting her mouth as she did so. “I think so,” she nodded. When she laid down on the bed, I covered her up with the blanket on the bed. “You’re so sweet. My dear Jason,” she cooed to me.

  I gave her a weak smile, leaning in I kissed her cheek. I knew no matter how much of a pain she was, I would never be able to abandon her again. Even though it sounded nice when she threw a fit, I couldn’t just leave her to rot in that house. She was entitled to have the care she needed, even if she wouldn’t understand that it was what was best for her at first. My mother had been just as much of a victim of my father’s abuse as Lyle and me. Ignorance was bliss, though. She didn’t know that my dad wasn’t the best she could get.

  Once she was tucked in, I headed to the door. Closing it softly behind me, I headed downstairs with a new perspective on my mother—which also added to the pressure on my shoulders to get us out from under the threat of Vinny and Roger.

  ~ ~ ~

  My new, mind-opening perspective of my mother was short-lived. She didn’t nap long, of course, and woke up having another episode. And for the rest of the day, she went through an endless cycle of having a meltdown, my brother and I managing to calm her down, her staying calm for about thirty minutes, and then have another episode. It had gotten to the point where we had tried force feeding her the pills. I had to lace a milkshake with one of her mood-stabilizers just to get some peace and quiet. Thanks to all of her screaming, my migraine was back for vengeance.

  Swallowing two of the painkillers Stephan had prescribed me, I almost savored the bitter taste in my mouth, knowing relief was coming. As soon as I got my mother out of the house, I was flushing those pills. If it weren't for my mom being so damn loud, I wouldn’t need the painkillers at all. Taking a deep breath, I headed back to the den to finish going through the final section of the room. The search was definitely taking a lot longer than I had anticipated with my mother needing so much attention. I was just glad Lyle was there to help me, knowing I would never be able to search through the entire house in one weekend without him.

  One bin at a time, I sorted through the junk they contained. In that whole room, I hadn’t found any kind of clue as to where my dad would hide valuables. It was just mounds of useless clutter, making me feel like I had wasted hours for nothing. There was no way for me to know that there would be nothing in there, though. He could have hidden it anywhere. It wasn’t like an eighth of a kilogram would take up an awful lot of space, neither would wads of money. After endless stacks, at last, I reached the final box in the room. Kneeling down to open it, I realized it said ‘Jason’s Stuff’. They kept the things I left behind? I had figured my dad would have tossed it out or burned it…

  Opening the box, I realized it wasn’t from when I left when I was a teenager, but from my childhood years. Clothes, toys, and blankets filled the box. When I saw a dark purple blanket with spaceships all over it, for some reason my initial instinct was to bring it to my nose and smell it. With the fabric raised to my nostrils, I inhaled sharply through my nose.

  My eyes opened, and I was laying in bed in my childhood bedroom. The room was pitch black except for a line of yellow light coming in from under the door to the hallway. My breathing was audible, though I tried to muffle it with the fabric of the blanket. I couldn’t have been more than six years old. My gaze was fixated on the line of light under the door, my heart thumping in my ears as heavy footsteps neared my door. More than anything in the whole wide world, I wanted my door to stay closed. I didn’t want him coming in there. My little eyes closed as tight as they could and prayed with all my might for him to leave me alone that night. But as I prayed, the door to my room swung open. I covered my face with the blanket, but it was snatched from my body. With widened eyes, I peered up to my father whose face was as red as a tomato as he swayed in place. Even as a young boy, I knew the signs of my father being intoxicated.

  He was yelling, but I couldn’t make sense of any of it. Did it make sense at all, or was it just the ramblings of a drunk? All I knew was that I was scared. Every time he got louder, I would flinch. My dad didn’t like that. “I’m not raising a nancy boy,” he growled, grabbing me up by the shirt. “You’ve got to toughen up, Jason. You hear me?” The man shook me like a rag doll, my head jolting back and forth with each vigorous shake. My body was then launched into the wall, landing with a painful thud onto the cold wooden floor. “Gilmores aren’t afraid of nothin’! You understand me, boy?! Toughen up!” he barked at me as he towered over my small form, kicking me repeatedly. Tears poured from my eyes as he screamed at me not to cry. I was so confused, not understanding what I had done wrong. I couldn’t stop crying, and I knew he was just going to get even madder at me because of it.

  Then, there was the sound of glass breaking in the hall. “Deacon!” my mother shrieked. I could hear her sobbing as she called to him again, “I broke my glass. There’s a shard stuck in my hand!”

  My father let out a snarl, once again pulling me into the air by the shirt. One of my eyes was swollen shut from getting hit by the toe of his boot. His eyes narrowed at me, “Count yourself lucky, boy. One of these days, you’ll learn real mean aren’t afraid of nothin’ and they don’t cry over nothin’.” My father then slung me onto my bed, uncaring that he made my head bounce off the headboard. The door slammed behind him as he went to tend to my mother. Cradling my head with one arm, I pulled my blanket up around me, wishing with all my might to disappear.

  Jerking my face away from the blanket, I stared with wide eyes down at it. My fingertips glided over the soft fabric as my mind mulled over the memory I had just relived. Was it possible my mother had dropped the glass on purpose to get him to pay attention to her? Maybe she had done things like that throughout the years to help Lyle and me, knowing she would get in trouble if she confronted him—but she could distract him. Who was to say what really happened…

  God my head was killing me. Standing from my spot on the floor, I put the lid back on the box and moved into the kitchen. Even though I had just taken a couple, it wouldn’t hurt to take another. It wasn’t like I needed to worry about getting addicted to them, I had already made the decision that I was going to flush them as soon as my mother was placed in assisted living. The pills were helping, so at least for the time being, I was going to continue taking them as I needed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: UNDER PRESSURE

  The Next Morning

  The weekend was blurring together. Sleep still eluded me, too much pressure on my shoulders to find my father’s stash to get any sort of rest. Of course, the muffled noise was back in my ears, adding to my irritability. The painkillers would only hold my migraine at bay for so long, resorting to drinking to keep it numb as I searched through the house. By Sunday around noon, Lyle and I had completed searching the den, my mother’s room, the bathroom, and the kitchen. The living room was the only room left that he could have hidden it. Pouring myself a stiff glass of bourbon and taking a couple more pills, I embarked on the quest of digging through the nightmare which was the living room.

  Deciding to start from lit
erally the top, I unfolded a three-step ladder and reached the top shelf of one of the walls. It was a pretty quick glance through since my mother was only five-foot-two and couldn’t reach the highest shelves easily. Most of what I found were old photographs covered in about half an inch of dust. I found myself wondering: if I were a drug addict, where would I hide my drugs? But that was a pointless question to waste time pondering. My father and I were nothing alike, so we wouldn’t think similarly. I couldn’t help but scoff—I wouldn’t have even gotten in this situation if I were my father. Deacon wasn’t meant to have a family, but had found a girl he could control, make dependent on him, and selfishly started a family anyways. If he hadn’t been so selfish, then maybe he would have understood that the world went beyond his existence. Just because he wanted a family, didn’t mean he deserved one. So in his reckless creation, he brought two innocent lives into the world just to torment and put down for a collective twenty-eight years. For what purpose? To fill some void he had inside? To have little ones to push around to make him feel superior? My father was exactly the reason I had never dated very much. Of course I longed for the companionship of a loving woman, a warm body to sleep with at night, and a mind to share ideas with… but that didn’t mean I deserved it. And I wouldn’t until my life was completely under control and free of the burdens placed on me by my father. What kind of state would I be in if I would have had a wife and a child by that point? They would be in harm’s way too, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing that my past would be their ultimate demise. But luckily I learned from my father’s ways, so I wasn’t dragging anyone else down with me.

  When I stepped down from the ladder, I grabbed my bourbon and took a swig. From the corner of my eye, I saw a black figure move. Was Lyle down here? Turning to look, I saw a head of black hair poking out from behind a stack of books. “What are you doing?” I called over with a chuckle. Lyle didn’t move, still sitting behind the books. “Are you looking at something?” I asked, carefully maneuvering around the furniture and stacks to get over to him. When I stepped around the couch, my eyes fell on Lyle—five-year-old Lyle. With my heart pounding in my chest, I rubbed my eyes and opened them back up.