The Ocean (22 page)

She stopped singing when she reached the chorus, and playing as she turned and looked at me. “‘Boys Like Girls,’ one of my favorites, but you already knew that.” She looked down at her guitar. “Thanks.”

“For what?” I smiled and leaned back against her wal .

“For being you.” She took off her guitar and placed it back in its case. Then she pul ed out a shoe box with a lid on it from another box. She opened it and dumped a bunch of old pictures out. We looked through them and laughed as she told me stories behind them. Then she held one up with a concentrated look on her face.

“This one,” she began, showing me a picture of a much younger Oliver holding a young Alex in his arms and her mother holding her, “was taken by my grandfather. It was the last time we visited him in Atlanta.” She traced the faces. “He took this picture right before we left. That was the last time I saw him, too. He died a few months later of a massive heart attack. We didn’t have the money for al of us to go to the funeral, so only my mother went. I barely remember him.” She looked up at me and asked, “Do you think in ten years I’l look at these again and barely remember my mother? I don’t want to forget her, but already sometimes I find myself trying hard to remember her expressions and her voice, and I can’t.” She looked past me then out the now-darkened window.

“I think that if you let your mind wander in those moments and try not to be so desperate for her, the memories wil find you and remind you of what you’re looking for. It’s hard to imagine something if you’ve put a lot of pressure on yourself to do so.” I patted her hand and found another picture and asked her about it.

After we put up some of her pictures on the wal s and she stacked boxes on top of the already cluttered shelf in her closet, we went to Alex’s room and kept him company while he put things away in his room. I sat on his bed and Gianna leaned against his dresser as he moved things around.

“Gia wants to sel our car; can you believe that?” he asked me but looked at Gia.

“We could buy something just as reliable and less flashy. It makes sense, maybe something that can carry the whole clan at one time like Mason’s SUV.” She shrugged.

“Or a minivan.” He rol ed his eyes as he put some trophies up on his shelf in the corner. He surveyed the rest of his boxes stil half ful .

“I should just put al this stuff in the attic or the basement. My room at home,” he paused and looked at her, “or in Indiana, was a lot bigger than this.

She nodded, agreeing with him.

“We stil have to go through Mom’s stuff.” She looked down at the ring on her hand.

“We should take what we want and donate everything else. There’s too much stuff.” He plopped down on his bed beside me.

“I don’t know if I should be here while you guys go through your mom’s stuff,” I stated, suddenly feeling like I was watching a very private moment.

“Travis, I couldn’t do this without you.” She walked over to where I sat and stood in front of me. I pul ed her onto my lap, and she draped her hand around my shoulder.

“I hate to admit it, dude, but I don’t think I could either.” Alex shrugged. “This is a lot to deal with on our own.” He stood and began consolidating boxes. “If we’re going to do this, then let’s do this,” he added, as he stacked and carried them out of the room. We fol owed him downstairs where Gia and I began carrying boxes upstairs.

We began with the ones that said “clothes.” She went through and held up her mother’s designer clothes to herself. It seemed that they were similar in size. Her mother must have been a very smal woman. I wondered how strong she must have real y been to have survived and how she overcame such obstacles. I wondered if I were in a similar situation if I would have been so strong.

In the end Gia took only a few of her cocktail dresses and some of her shoes. She marked out “clothes” and wrote “donate.” The next box was ful of jewelry. Alex picked a few pieces out. Then they came across one of Mitchel ‘s watches. Gia tried to get Alex to take it, but he wouldn’t. She held it out to me. I looked at it.

“It’s broken,” I said, handing it back to her.

“I’l get it fixed. Would you wear it?” I looked at it again. I thought I would; it was an expensive watch. The name David Yurman was in smal type across the face. I knew it had to cost a few thousand dol ars. I couldn’t believe that Alex didn’t want it. He looked at it again.

“Mom bought it for Mitchel as a birthday present last year. It should work.” He took it and pushed the pin on the side and it started ticking. She took it back and put it on my wrist. It was a little loose. She frowned, “I’l stil take it to the jewelry store and get it taken up.” Scrutinizing it, she noted, “Two links.” Then she smiled at me. “Don’t say I never gave you anything,” she said with a wink. I hugged her around the waist and pul ed her down on his bed. She giggled, and Alex breathed loudly, annoyed. We sat up and continued going through boxes.

I thought it was therapeutic for them, and I real y got to know them both more. They bantered back and forth and talked about their memories with their mother. Final y, the evening came to an end, and it was time to go. Gia walked me downstairs and onto the front porch where we said goodnight. When we kissed, it was the sweetest kiss I’d known.

Remove the Rose-Colored Glasses, See the World in Living Color

Gianna

I think that I was the happiest I had ever been over the course of the next few weeks. I had good friends, and I had Travis. I stil missed my mom, but the pain of the loss wasn’t quite as piercing as it had been. It almost felt as if the pain were dul ing. Only three months had passed, and though I missed her daily, I felt better. I didn’t feel as guilty for finding a little happiness during my mourning. I was also relieved because neither Jil ian nor Chiz were bothering us. In fact, it seemed that they had become the new “it” couple and were seen al over school in various stages of a continuing make-out session.

After practice one Thursday evening, Alex came in with Travis, bouncing off the wal s.

“We sold the car! Brandon’s dad wants to buy it tonight. Where’s Oliver?” Alex bounced past me into the dining room then the living room, looking around.

“He said he had a meeting and then was closing the pub tonight,” I said. I was surprised that Oliver’s and my relationship had softened a little since Mitchel ‘s visit. I had refused to drive the new car, and final y Alex put a for sale sign in it. I didn’t want anything from Mitchel . I liked the fact that my boyfriend was wearing a watch that cost almost five thousand dol ars, and that Mitchel had probably absentmindedly put it into the box of jewelry.

Oliver had refused to let us donate any of our mother’s stuff, especial y her jewelry. He told us we would regret it when we were older, and it was better to give it to someone important to us in the future than just to let anyone have it. I’d seen his point, eventual y.

“Oliver has to sign over the title. You wanna go try to catch him before his meeting starts? I think it starts at six-thirty.” He looked at the clock on the microwave.

“Yeah, I guess we can,” I said, and looked at Travis. “Do you want to come with?” He hugged me close to him and kissed the top of my head.

“I think this is a family matter. Besides my mom has been missing me. She wanted me to insist that tomorrow dinner is at my house. She and Hailey keep asking when they get to see you again.” I nodded, and he squeezed me again and was out the back door. Alex and I fol owed shortly after he grabbed a sports drink from the refrigerator.

We headed toward downtown where our father was at his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. We arrived, and there were stil some people standing outside on the stone stoop and stairs, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee as they talked to each other. Alex smiled at me encouragingly. We entered the old church. We fol owed the signs to the basement. There along the back of the wal was a table that had stale-looking cookies and coffee machines. There was a woman standing at a microphone at the podium in the front of the group. She was talking about the turning point in her life: living in her car, having her children taken away from her and the despair she felt. I looked at Alex apprehensively. He led me over to the corner to two chairs in the back of the room. We sat down and scanned the room. Oliver sat in the middle of a row toward the front. There was no way to get his attention without disrupting the meeting. There had to have been over one hundred people here. The lady finished and took her seat.

A man who wore a brown tweed suit jacket stepped up to the podium. He thanked her and surveyed the crowd for a moment. Then he simply said,

“Oliver, why don’t you share your story with us.” I took a deep breath, and Alex squeezed my knee. Then we both looked down at our hands. Oliver stood and sidestepped out to the middle aisle. He walked down the center of the room to the podium where he stood in front of the gathering and surveyed the room. I didn’t think his eyes reached us though. He didn’t look past the first few rows of people in both aisles.

He began, “Hel o, I’m Oliver, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, Oliver,” the crowd said in unison.

“I met my wife after I graduated from high school. I had gone to Atlanta to work for my uncle. My parents emigrated from Italy when I was a tot, four or five. I was taught to work hard and be very disciplined. I worked for my uncle’s landscaping company. He did the landscaping for a few of the schools. She was in summer school. I remember her looking at me from the window when I worked there. I liked her, and after a few weeks I had the nerve to wait around after her class let out and talk to her. She was intoxicating. Her wil was strong, her opinions dominant, and she loved as purely and deeply as one could ever hope to find. We corresponded while she finished high school, and I moved back here working odds-and-ends jobs.

When she graduated, we were married a month later. I’d like to say it was a happy ending, but it wasn’t.

After a few years of marriage and the struggle of the day to day, we had our first child, a little boy, and he was a fighter, too. Oh, the spirit on that one; he had her strong wil . I bought a house and a business, a bar. A year and a half later, we had my beautiful daughter. She was so delicate and gentle. I felt like the world was right, and everything had a purpose. The bar was a success, and I began to celebrate with my employees a few nights a week. I didn’t see the harm in that. My Anna, though, she was fit to be tied. She would wait up for me, and we would argue, yel ing back and forth at each other into the afternoons some days. On those days, I began to drink more. I didn’t see what the big deal was; we were making money and she and my babies were taken care of.

It got to the point that I was drinking every night, coming home drunk and drinking during the day. A lot of those days were a blur.” He paused and looked down at the podium like it would tel him what to say. He spoke softly now, the microphone barely picking up his voice, but it did. I heard every part of the next thing he said. “I remember the first day I lost my temper. Anna was so strong-wil ed, and she refused to be empathetic to my desires. She kept tel ing me that I had a drinking problem, and I denied it.

I guess what set me off was when she said she was going to go to her father’s with the children. For some reason I lost it. I slapped her across her face. She screamed, and I immediately felt horrible and tried to hold her. I cried probably harder than she did and swore I wouldn’t do it again. And I didn’t for a while, but then we began arguing again, and I did it again.” He paused a moment and swal owed hard. “I didn’t stop drinking, and I didn’t stop hitting her. I don’t even remember some of the things that would set me off. It got to the point that even on good days, I came home and hit her. I was spiraling out of control. I was always drunk. She was broken, and I was the monster who broke her.

After four years of that, she had enough. She filed charges against me and got a restraining order. She left and took the children with her. At first, I was furious with her and contemplated hunting her down and kil ing her because if she wasn’t going to be with me, then she wasn’t going to be. That was the lowest point in my life. I am ashamed that I even thought such a horrible thing. But I began to wonder how I became such a wretched person.

I stopped drinking the night they left. I turned myself in. I pleaded guilty with no contest and was given three years in prison.” I vaguely remembered my mom leaving for a few days after we arrived in Atlanta. I wondered if she had returned to deal with his charges. Neither one of them had ever told us about this. He continued, “I entered a rehab program in prison and continued it after I was released. It was the least that I could have done.

Anna kept track of my progress and would send me pictures of my children. She even asked me to visit, but I didn’t want to upset them; they had seen enough of me. I thought it was over; I was living my life one sober day at a time, but then Anna passed away, and now I have my children again. It has been real y frustrating for me, and for the first time in a long time, it has been a struggle for me not to drink.” He paused and looked at the faces in the crowd. “Not because of what you probably think. It has been hard because in those children’s eyes, I am stil the man I was then.

They are waiting for me to become angry and hit them. I see it, and it makes me want to escape their horror and their bitterness. They are two of the most amazingly strong young people I have ever known. They are that way because Anna’s escaping me taught them that they are worth more than that. It’s a struggle every day to get up, knowing that I had nothing to do with them being so strong, and knowing that they stil despise me. I deserve it, but it doesn’t make it less painful.”

“Anna was the only woman I ever loved, and she is real y gone. I was able to accept her being gone because I knew she was taking care of herself and our children. But now she’s gone, and I never got to tel her goodbye. I don’t think I would have gone to her, but I would have at least cal ed her and said something. I don’t know what I would have said, but if I’d have known the last time I heard her voice was the last time, I’d have made more of it.” He looked at the man sitting behind him and walked back to his seat. He was also broken. I realized he did love us as much as he could, and maybe I could give him another chance. The alcohol had made him a monster, and our leaving had not only saved us, but had saved him. I didn’t even know he went to prison. There were things that my mother kept from us, I suddenly realized. The man in the tweed jacket encouraged Oliver to continue his sobriety and told him he was very proud of him. He also said he knew how far he had come and how hard it was for him to admit that he had a problem and work to quit it. We al applauded. Alex applauded and actual y stood, causing some around him to stand. Oliver looked around embarrassed, but then he turned to the back corner where some people stood, and his eyes rested on his son, who now was smiling at him.