Broken (8 page)

I hope Ethan is at the next group session. We don’t have many more before the Christmas break. And after Christmas, everyone knows what happens. Depression, debt and standing up in front of
him.
I’m not ready.

3
December 2015. Eighty one days after.

James William Cutler is not the man that murdered my wife. Nor is Joseph Bekele or Aaron Tate. These men are all guilty of their own crimes, but they are not guilty of what happened to Alice. The search for that man continues. I have a list and I’m working my way through it methodically. Doing Cutler was difficult, but I know it will only get easier. I’m on a mission now, and with each man I take off the list, I know I only get closer to completing it.

“Ethan?”

I turn my head to my name, more slowly than I intend to.

“Ethan?”

“Hi”, I say, the smile spreading across my face a genuine one.

“It’s Jo, you know, from the group. How’s it going?”

“Hey, Jo”, I say. “Alright, thanks.”

“We missed you last week. It was kind of empty without you. Were you ok?”

Jo seems genuinely concerned about me, and that surprises me a little. I put the apple I’ve been holding for what could be a long time back into the basket with the others and turn to face her.

“I just had a few things to do, that was all”, I say. “How did it go?”

“Ok”, Jo says.

I watch her cross her arms over her chest protectively. This must be difficult for her, alone here with me, a stranger essentially. Someone more powerful. After it happened, I became much more aware of myself as a man, of my capabilities, of how I might come across in this kind of situation.

I try not to make her feel uncomfortable in my presence. I open up my arms and lean casually against the table to my left. I smile at her too, keeping myself a relatively normal distance away.

“We waited for you, and then talked a little. I have my court case coming up in January, so there’s that.”

“Oh”, I say. “How do you feel?”

Jo smiles and then she looks away. When she looks back, I can see her eyes welling and tears brimming ready to crash over. She’s vulnerable. It’s how Alice would have been had she survived. Strong on the outside but falling apart on the inside. It’s how I am. I go to her quickly, naturally, without thinking. I have a natural desire to comfort her, but Jo steps away as I approach, and I suddenly realize that what I was about to do - touch her on the arm, hug her even - would have been wildly inappropriate given the circumstances. I quickly back away.

“Sorry”, I say, my hands up. “I didn’t mean-.”

“No, it’s ok”, Jo says, pushing the tear away from the corner of her eye. “It’s just. It’s so soon, you know, and I’m not ready. I don’t know. It’s been a hard couple of weeks settling back into work and now this.”

“I understand”, I say. “What you have been through already, you know-. It must be hard.”

Jo tries to smile, but I can see the corners of her lips vibrating as though she’s trying not to cry.

“What about you?”, she asks, desperate to compose herself and move the focus away to something else.

“I’m getting on”, I say. “A day at a time.”

“You always seem so relaxed. I mean, I know we don’t know each other at all, but you seem, I don’t know, I’m rambling on here.”

“It’s the medication”, I say, and smile to break the tension. Alice used to say the same thing about me, that I was relaxed, even at the times I didn’t feel it. I knew I had that capacity, to make my body lie to hide the truth. “Every day is hard for me too”, I say, “I lose focus, I wonder what the point of it all is, I have bad days and good days and days where I can’t even get out of bed, but they are still days. I have my running, and i’m keeping fit and eating well. I’m doing everything they tell me I need to.”

“That’s good”, Jo says, her arms relaxed a little and down by her side now. “You look like you’re in shape. I’m eating like a pig, I can’t be bothered to cook most nights so I just get takeout and sit on the couch and end up leaving half of it anyway. I’m not very motivated.”

“You’ve motivated yourself to come here”, I say. “That takes motivation.”

“I live right at the end of the street”, she says, laughing a little. “I’m going crazy at home and even crazier at work. All this Christmas stuff is driving me insane.”

“Yeah? It’s a bit much isn’t it?”

To be honest, I hadn’t really even noticed. I’ve been too busy with training and searching for people to stop and take things in. She’s right though, I notice it as I take a look around the shop. Advertisements, new packaging on products, there’s even a jingle coming over the tannoy so subtle I hadn’t even consciously realised it was there. I’m zoning out again, and Jo’s smiling sweetly at me as though it could have been a long time de-focussing.

“Sorry, I-.”

“The zoning out, it’s ok”, she says. “I get that sometimes too.”

“I don’t even know where I go”, I say. “I mean, I know physically I don’t go anywhere, but mentally, it’s kind of weird, I just, I don’t know, it feels like a hole. It’s not unpleasant. Quite the opposite actually.”

“Maybe it’s what your brain needs to recover”, Jo says. “Sometimes I wish I could do that too, you know, totally detach myself from reality.”

A moment of silence passes between us as we both contemplate this. A complete and total disconnection from reality.

“Are you coming next week?” Jo asks, her arm folded back over her chest.

“I’ll be there”, I say. “I can’t let Paul bore you again with his stories about his amateur dramatics club, it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Professional amatuer dramatics club”, she says, “They’re going on tour in the new year. Plus he wants us to come and see his Christmas production. It’s twenty dollars a ticket.”

“Huh”, I say, biting my lip a little. “Good for him. Maybe we should go.”

“I think he’d really appreciate it”, Jo offers.

That silence crisps the space between us again, and neither one of us really knows how to end the conversation. It’s Jo, finally, that takes the lead.

“I better get to it”, she says. “I hate shopping with a passion, but I haven’t got anyone else to do it for me. See you in the group?”

“Yeah”, I say, smiling at her again. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Me too. Don’t forget your twenty dollars”, she says as she disappears into the labyrinthine network of the supermarket.

After Jo has gone, I realize that during my short conversation with her, I didn’t think about Alice, her brutal murder, or the people I’m searching for once. I disconnected without zoning out the whole time and I don’t even get that in the therapy sessions. I think about that for the rest of the day, pondering exactly what it might mean.

8
December 2015. Seventy two days after.

I’m excited to see Ethan back with us. He’s sat in
his
chair, casually slouched into one corner of it, as much as anybody could be on a fold-up metal and plastic office chair, with his hands tucked away into the pockets of a runner’s hoodie. When I’ve taken my own seat, pulled it into the group to close the ring more tightly, I notice he has a black eye and a cut on his cheek, his glasses do little to conceal. In fact, his glasses themselves appear to have been broken and fixed with sealing tape.

“Shit, Ethan, what happened?”

“Fell off his bike”, Paul says, before Ethan gets a chance to respond to me. His hand goes up to indicate that what Paul has said is the truth.

“You should see his hands”, Paul adds.

“Come on, Paul, it isn’t that bad.”

“Show us again, Ethan”, Emily encourages.

Ethan shifts a little on his chair and then reluctantly takes his hands out of his pockets to show me. One is bandaged, the other covered in cuts and bruises where swelling hasn’t yet gone down.

“Took a bad hit”, Paul says.

“I was going too fast”, Ethan confirms.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break anything.”

“Are you ok?” I ask.

“Yeah”, Ethan says, in his usual, languid way. “A bit sore, but I’m ok.”

“What happened exactly?”

“Oh man, it’s kind of embarrassing”, Ethan says, pushing those broken glasses up his nose a little and dropping his shoulders. He is so likeable, I suddenly realize. His body movements, his way of speaking, the way he kind of looks at you, but not directly, as though he’s timid, but polite with it, comfortable within himself, but aware of himself too. “I kind of zoned out on the bike.”

Paul shakes his head. “I keep telling you those drugs they give you are no good.”

“Yeah, well-”, Ethan says. “I guess it was partly the drugs”, he pauses to take his glasses off and clean them, giving us an up close and personal view of his injuries. When he realises - I wince a little, whistling air sharply in through my mouth - he quickly puts them back on again with an apology. “I’ve been meaning to get the brakes fixed for a while. Plus I’m a little out of practise. It’s ok though, I’m fine.”

The session passes quickly. Paul talks about his theatre production and is over the moon when Ethan says that we have decided to go along and support him. He even has the tickets with him to sell.

Emily is disappointed she can’t make it, but both Patricia and Carmen agree to come along too after a little bit of jovial peer pressure.

Ethan talks about his training plans for the new year, speaking earnestly about what he wants to achieve, and I talk about vacation plans to Cincinnati to be with my parents and how much I’m actually dreading it.

I’m not looking forward to the Christmas break at all. I’m dreading the forced celebrations with family and old school friends, the inability to have my own space and lose myself in it, the unavoidable talks about my court case, and more than anything else, and I know it sounds stupid to say, but the time away from this group.

I’m fond of everyone in here, of Patricia's candid remarks, of Paul’s mood swings, of Emily’s idiosyncrasies, Katy’s comforting tone, and Ethan’s calming presence. It’s Ethan I feel like I’m going to miss the most. I have a fear that I’m going to lose him. That when I come back from Christmas, Ethan will be gone and I won’t have anything else to look forward to.

We leave the group together, say goodbye to the other members and trudge through the cold up to the point where I go one way and Ethan, the other.

“I think Paul’s excited”, I say.

“I know, right?” Ethan responds. “I wonder how terrible it’s going to be.”

“I’m glad you came today”, I say, turning at the same time he does, so we walk for a moment looking at each other.

“I told you I wasn’t going to miss it”, he says. “It’s my favorite part of the week.”

“Mine too”, I say, without hesitation. After a while I add, “You know, there’s no reason why we can’t meet outside of the group. I mean, I guess we all live quite close together.”

“That would be nice”, Ethan says, but I don’t know whether he’s just being polite.

We walk a little bit further without either one of us saying anything else.

“What will you do for Christmas?”, I finally ask.

“I hadn’t even thought about it”, Ethan says. “Just getting by is as much as I can cope with at the moment. You know, Alice not being here and stuff, I don’t really feel like celebrating. Martin may have something planned, but, I don’t know, it doesn’t feel right somehow.”

We pause at the intersection, cold biting at us. I can see the air condensing in front of me, and the day already falling away over the buildings to the skyline beyond.

I feel sad again, as though something good is coming to an end. As though there is something I want to say but can’t, as though I have a network of conflicting feelings and emotions going on inside me.

“Alice would have liked you”, Ethan says, kind of out of nowhere. “You’re a good person. You’re kind and thoughtful. It’s a shame she’s not here so you two can meet.”

“I would have liked that”, I say.

“Do you have a phone?” Ethan asks, and the question is so unexpected, it kind of confuses me for a moment.

“A phone?”, I ask.

“Yeah”, Ethan says in his inimitable way. “Unless you want me to knock on every door in Pittsburgh to find you.”

I smile. “You’d do that for me?!”

“I might”, Ethan says. “I can be quite dedicated when I want to be.”

I take out my phone and we swap numbers. This is a normal thing that new friends do, so i’m not entirely sure why it feels like I’m doing something wrong, or exciting or unexpected. Ethan drops his phone back into his pocket.

“Just call me if you want to meet up”, he says. “You know, if you need to chat about something or if you’re feeling low or, whatever. I’m usually busy in the evenings, but I’m pretty free in the day after I’ve gone running and worked out in the morning. And now I can’t do the bag work-.” He holds up his bandaged right hand as evidence of his inability to box, “-I’m a little more flexible with my time.”

“Thanks, Ethan”, I say. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem”, he says. “Of course, if you need me to cook for you, that’s another thing entirely.”

“Don’t worry”, I say, without skipping a beat. “As long as I’ve got a microwave, I’ve got that covered.”

I watch him trudge away up the hill again, his hands tucked into his pockets, maybe against the cold, maybe just to hide them. I turn towards my house with the feeling that something has just started, as though the clock has been reset again, and I’m excited to find out exactly what that might mean.

1
2 December 2015. Ninety days after.

Three months have passed. A quarter of a year. 2160 hours. 129,600 minutes. I’m taking the photos of Alice down for a second time. I took them down shortly after it happened, because I couldn’t bear to look at them. Then I put them back up after a month or so and now, for a second time, I’m taking them off the shelves and packing them into boxes that I’m storing away in the attic. Traces of Alice will always remain within this house, and in my head and my heart, but with Christmas around the corner, I can’t cope with having those memories prodded every time I walk into a room. I want to start the new year with a clean slate until all of the loose ends are tied up. Then, and only then, can I begin to allow Alice to filter back towards me. We no longer have the relationship we used to, and I know that. Knowing that and accepting that are two entirely different things though. What I’m doing now is both for Alice and for me. It’s so Alice can rest in peace and it’s so I can get on with my life without her. Without Alice. The words are so potent I have no idea whether or not I’ll ever get used to saying them. I say them a lot in the group, and each time I do, I feel like I’m betraying her memory, as though I myself form a part of keeping her buried.