Aaron (12 page)

A
ARONdidn’t want to open his eyes the next morning when his mother called through the door that it was time to get up. It had been years since he’d used an alarm clock; the evil jarring noise made his heart leap into his throat. Even when it was set to music, it startled him so badly that it put him on edge for the rest of the day. So his mom woke him up, and her voice soothed rather than scared him. It was just one more thing that she did for him to help him cope with the fact that he barely functioned. Sometimes, as he lay staring up at the blank ceiling above his head, he wondered if maybe his mother did too much for him. She was enabling him by not pushing or challenging him so that the status quo could be maintained. Even after two years, he still felt like an infant or some kind of invalid because he hadn’t made any progress. He was still that weak, scared little boy they’d found nearly dead on the oil-stained floor.

He didn’t have time to lie there and dissect the issue of his abnormal psychosis right then, however. At that moment, he needed to open his eyes and get into the shower in order to start his day—his first day of college. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes to see a perfectly blue, cloudless sky. Maybe it would be a good day.

He rushed through his shower and the rest of his morning routine, and then grabbed his laptop bag and headed downstairs. He felt bad about making his mother worry after visiting Juliette on Saturday. He had been very quiet, introspective, when they’d gotten home. Seeing her name carved into the tombstone like that really brought it home for him. It wasn’t just some horrifying nightmare. She wasn’t on vacation with her family. Juliette had been raped and murdered less than ten feet from him. Before the men had stabbed him, before they had cut his face and his arms and tried to kill him, they had made him watch as they cut her throat. They had made him watch, knowing that it was going to happen to him too just as soon as they were done with her. He could still feel the cold concrete pressed under his mostly naked body, smell the putrid odor of sweat and gasoline as the boot dug into his cheek as the man held him still. The blood had poured from her as the knife slid with little resistance across her soft skin, soaking her torn sweater and finally pooling on the filthy floor.

Aaron hadn’t wanted to talk about any of this, least of all with his mother. She did so much for him already, there was no way he would plant those images in her head. Those images, and other images that to him were just as horrifying, would stay locked inside him. At no time that he could imagine would he burden someone else with his nightmares.

As he walked into the kitchen, Aaron promised himself that he would eat whatever his mother put in front of him. It was the least he could do for her, not causing her any more worry than was absolutely necessary. He had already done enough. Allen passed him on his way out to school as Aaron settled into a kitchen chair. Since Allen was old enough to drive both himself and Anthony to school in the beat-up Ford Mustang that his parents had bought for them, he could afford to leave a little bit later. The two miles to the combination junior/senior high school took much less time in their day-glo orange beater.

“I hope you have a great first day, man,” Allen said, and then he shoved a cereal bar whole into his mouth and grabbed his bag.

“Thanks,” Aaron replied as his mother placed a plate of blueberry pancakes in front of him. Allen said something unintelligible with the cereal bar taking up most of the space in his mouth, and ran for the front door.

“If you rolled out of bed more than five minutes before you had to leave, I’d make them for you too,” his mother called after Allen with a laugh. Aaron looked up at her, the guilt eating at his stomach as he noticed the dark circles under her eyes. It was obvious that she hadn’t slept well last night either. He must have really scared her yesterday.

“Mom, are you busy?” Aaron asked, the words out of his mouth before he really decided to speak.

“I’m never too busy for my boys,” his mother said with a smile and sat down in the empty seat across from him. Strangely pleased that she had brought pancakes for herself as well, he thought it would be really nice to just sit here at the table and eat alone with his mom.

“I’m sorry I was so… quiet. I know that it worried you. I just…. I can’t….” Aaron started, but had really no idea how to finish.

I can’t tell you about all the horrible things I see in my head. I can’t clearly articulate what it’s like to die inside.

I can’t describe what it’s like to want to scream every minute of every day.

He had no idea what the hell he was supposed to tell her. Even during the hundreds of wasted hours of useless therapy, he’d never talked about it. The humiliation, the shame were only the tip of the psychiatric iceberg. So the shrinks pumped him full of pills and moved on to someone they
could
help.

“You don’t need to apologize, Aaron. I knew it would be hard for you. To tell you the truth, I would have been more worried if you hadn’t been upset by it, and I’m really proud of you for going. You walked alone across the grass, and you made it through. The Aaron we brought home two years ago wouldn’t have been able to do that. I hope you can see how far you’ve come. Things are getting better, honey, slowly.” It was such a lovely sentiment Aaron didn’t have the heart to contradict her, so he remained silent. Soon after they finished their breakfast, she drove him to school.

As he stood against the wall outside the computer lab where his first class was to be held, he took several deep breaths, trying to calm the panicky, out-of-control feeling in his chest. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, and he focused on a single tile on the floor. When he could breathe again, he turned and opened the door. Just as he had hoped, there were no other students in the lab yet. Walking to the very last row of computers, he took the one on the end. Dropping into the ugly fabric chair, he rolled up to the desk and turned on the machine, bringing up a free gaming site once it had booted.

One by one, students began to file into the large auditorium-style rows of tables and computers. Aaron started to get nervous when people sat in the row right in front of him. The class was going to be near capacity. He had been almost comfortable with the empty rows serving as a barrier between him and the rest of the people in the room. Just a few more students, and someone might sit right next to him. Could he deal with that? Would he have to change sections? Would he have to drop? Aaron didn’t see the fucking point of going to college anyway. It’s not like he’d ever be able to hold down a job. He knew he would be a burden on his parents, and then his brothers for the rest of his life, which he hoped wasn’t drawn out.

He noticed the empty seat next to his was marked “RESERVED.” He wondered if his instructor, Dr. Mayer, had done that to give him the chance to sit alone. The panicky feeling in his chest started to loosen when his instructor came into the room and dropped a worn leather backpack on the table at the front. He was a younger guy, maybe in his late twenties, with shaggy brown hair and glasses. He looked fairly at ease in his khaki pants and solid blue polo. It was casual classroom attire. He dallied at the front of the room for several minutes, pulling things out of the backpack. It seemed he was waiting for the students to settle so class could begin. Dr. Mayer had just put up the syllabus on the computer projector when the lab door opened and a teenage boy entered with an older woman. His long brown curls were windswept as he climbed the stairs, walking right toward Aaron, who prayed silently they would take the seats across the aisle from him.

The boy, who Aaron now noticed had a strong build and probably a day’s worth of stubble on his face, sat down right next to him, pulling the reserved sign off the monitor. He looked over at Aaron with hauntingly deep hazel eyes, smiled shyly, and then turned to watch the woman sitting next to him. Aaron wondered why he was paying more attention to the woman than to the instructor until she started moving her hands. The boy took the vibrant blue messenger bag off his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the woman as she kept using sign language to communicate to him.

He was deaf.

His black T-shirt stretched tight over his shoulders as he crossed his arms, still watching the woman as she relayed the content of the lecture. With each successive line of the syllabus or announcement Dr. Mayer made, the woman repeated it in controlled, practiced gestures. It became apparent to Aaron why they made him sit in the back. The boy may have been able to read lips from the front row, but his companion’s signing would have been distracting to the rest of the students in the hall. By putting him in the back, the distraction was at least minimized.

The first class was all about the syllabus, expectations, et cetera, and Aaron sat quietly, mostly listening. He found himself increasingly distracted by the boy on his left as he listened to the lecture through the hands of the woman. A sense of familiarity or similarity gave Aaron pause, because he understood all too well what it was like to have to rely on others in order to survive. Unable to imagine what it would be like to be deaf, to have the hardships the guy had to suffer through, he felt a surge of empathy as he turned back to the lecture.

Just as he caught up to what Dr. Mayer was reading from the syllabus, his breath froze in his lungs. A quarter of his grade would depend on a partner project. He couldn’t do a partner project. Just the thought of being that close to someone, of the time it would take to complete while they stared at him with horror and revulsion, made him shut down completely inside. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples as the panic took over, and the room started to get smaller.

It was all he could do keep it at bay until his mother arrived.

“Mom, you need to talk to the instructor. I can’t do a project with someone,” Aaron pleaded with his mother as soon as he had shut the car door. She had arrived right on time, and was waiting for him when he exited the building at a run.

“Take a deep breath and calm down, Aaron. Whatever it is, we will work it out. Now, tell me what happened.” Her calm was unnerving him. How could she be so calm when he was falling apart? He hadn’t wanted to go to college in the first fucking place, but now that he was there it gave him something to do. It allowed him to think about something else, focus on something other than the miserable reality of his life. His college career was about to end before it ever really got started.

There was no way he would be able to graduate without this class, no matter who his mother talked to. It was the prerequisite for the next course in the series. He’d be stopped in his tracks if he couldn’t take it. The problem was, there was no way he would be able to work so closely with someone else
. What the fuck was he going to do?
His hands automatically tightened into fists, as they always did when the panic attack started. Whoever he was paired with, they would pity him, stare at him, maybe even request another partner because they were repulsed by him
. Oh God.

“Aaron, you need to calm down. I will talk to your instructor. What is the worst that could happen, honey? Think about it. You drop the class, or you split up the work with someone and never see them again. Maybe I can get him to let you do the project on your own. It will be okay.”

Aaron looked into his mother’s worried face and nodded, taking a deep breath. She was right. The worst thing that could happen is that he was done with college. He had already lived through so much worse. Sitting back in the passenger seat, he closed his eyes, trying to work through the fear, work through the panic. His mother would take care of it; she always took care of it.
He would be okay
. He didn’t have to go to college. It wasn’t a matter of life and death.
He was okay.

After ten minutes of deep breathing and talking himself down, he finally opened his eyes to see his mother smiling at him.

 

“Why are you smiling?” Aaron asked, genuinely curious. The moment didn’t seem particularly happy or amusing to him.

“Even as recently as six months ago, you wouldn’t have been able to calm yourself down when you started to panic. You would have to have taken an Ativan.”

He thought about that for a minute. She was right, but he pushed the idea away immediately because he didn’t want to hope. If he started to hope things were getting better when they weren’t, that would devastate him further when his parents finally sent him away. No, he wasn’t getting better. He would continue to have to rely on his mother, to not have friends, to merely exist. While he was medicated, he could dream about having a normal life, but when the drugs started to wear off he’d remember it could never be possible for him. So, when his mother insinuated that he was getting better, he filed the comment away to study when he could once again dare to hope. His mother seemed to understand.

As soon as they arrived home, his mother called Dr. Mayer’s office to talk to him about the project, even going so far as to suggest that Aaron work on it alone. However, since the point of the project was collaboration, he wouldn’t budge. Programmers, he reasoned, often had to work in teams to accomplish their objectives. Dr. Mayer wanted them to start working on their team-building and professional social skills. By the time the conversation was over and she hung up the phone, Aaron wanted to vomit.

Okay, twenty-five percent of his grade. If he aced the rest of the course, he could pass without doing the project at all. That raised his spirits. With a renewed sense of hope, he headed upstairs to start reading his first assignment.

The next day in class, Dr. Mayer started to lecture about program structure. Aaron watched him over the top of his flat-panel monitor, making sure to pay closer attention than he had ever done in any class. High school, from what he could remember, had been easy. He would listen to a lecture, do his homework, maybe study for a test or two— mostly in history—and then be done. Finishing high school through homeschooling was altogether different. Even though there were no other students and Aaron was sitting at his own kitchen table, he felt restless and anxious. Focus, memory, everything seemed to be a problem for him like they had never been in the past. His mother had a rough battle just to get him to the point where he could meet the state’s requirements for graduation. At the time, Aaron didn’t see the point in continuing his high school education, much like he didn’t see the point in going to college. The two positive things that had come out of both finishing high school and going to college were that the gestures seemed to give his mother a purpose, like she was making a real difference. It also kept his mind off the horrible images that continued to torture him.