Chapter Thirty-Nine Mother and Child

When I was kid, life was simple. I didn’t have to be concerned with anything other than what was on TV that night, or who to play with at recess. My idea of a problem would be sleeping in too late on Saturday, and then missing some foolish cartoon, staring turtles who dressed up like Ninjas. My idea of a crisis would be something equally foolish, like breaking my favorite racecar. Everything was so simple; so fucking easy. I didn’t have anything to worry about, and nothing kept me up late at night thinking. People always tell kids to stay away from drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol and kids usually do it anyway without adult guidance. Even if they get a taste of it at age five, they usually never continue. That’s because they don’t need to. They don’t need to drown out their complex feelings because they don’t have them yet.

I didn’t remember when things changed for me. When TV stopped being so important and my nights were filled doing homework my insane elementary school teachers gave us. I didn’t remember when recess ceased to exist and all I had was travel time between classes where I wished for a cigarette. When I came to school drunk because I couldn’t get through first period without numbing myself to deal, and when homework was so ordinary, I didn’t even bother to do it. I didn’t remember when things blurred from childhood into adolescence, and more importantly, I couldn’t even remember the distinct time when that adolescence became full-blown adulthood. Gerard had wanted me to grow up, and was trying to get me there, but it seemed like I fluctuated too much from one stage of life to the other, that I was never fully stuck into one category. Instead, my body stretched and flexed everywhere, until I was shattered into a thousand pieces over scattered lives.

Maybe that’s why I was so confused all the time.

There was no such thing as confusion in childhood, not serious enough, anyway. Different worries came from different ages, and I was beginning to forget how old I was, and just how many I had racked up.

Some days I fucking felt like I was four, not because I had little worries, but because I didn’t know the answer to anything. I felt like my intelligence was rendered to that of a pre-schooler, especially when I was surrounded by adults looking down on me and listing off legal terms like it was no big deal, and telling me what to do or how to feel. Other days and times I would feel like I was a teenager again, worrying over the littlest matter and feeling like I was trapped. Days of high school and drunken nights spent with Sam and Travis entered my mind, and how I could do nothing but associate with them when I was inebriated. They clung to my definition of a teenager, and I couldn’t erase that from my past, especially when it kept coming back into the present.

Then there were the other times, the better times, on those rare occasions when Gerard called me one, or I did something good, where I felt like an adult. I could take care of myself, be responsible, and have a life outside fucking New Jersey and high school. Where I could be an artist, whatever that entailed, and be confident and secure in everything I did. Even when I was irresponsible, driving drunk at night and getting caught by the cops, I still felt like I was an adult in some strange way. I was being arrested and charged; that only happened to adults. Adults or delinquents, I corrected myself. I didn’t know how old I was anymore. I didn’t know who I was anymore, if I even did to begin with.

I was caught; there was no denying what I had done. The cop had found me, only a few short minutes from Gerard’s building where I was going to go drop off the van again before I took my sorry ass home. Or maybe I was going to reconcile. Apologize for being a stupid teenager and running out of his apartment; I didn’t know. I was too drunk and confused to know.

Instead of my own abode, however, the cop placed me in the back of his car and took me down to the station. I was driving drunk; the empty bottle of wine was still in the passenger’s seat, and the dark stains from the excess amounts not fully past my lips were splattered all over my light shirt. He could smell it on me, and I didn’t even realize how strong the odor was until I was taken outside of its environment. I stunk; in more ways than one. I felt like he could smell my fear and anger along with the crushed and fermented fruit, but it didn’t matter to him if I was afraid or not. He was taking me down to the station either way.

Not only was I driving drunk, but I didn’t even have a fucking license. I had never been to driver’s school, and had only just started my lessons with the artist. He had taught me well there, at least, and I had managed to avoid crashing into anything in my short escapade. I apparently had been swerving all over the road on the other hand, which led the cop to my attention. The police force had sent out many cops to watch the Jersey streets and patrol for kids, like myself, who were out from a late night of partying and attempting to drive home. It was still spring break, after all; the time where kids got their craziest.

Driving drunk was where the similarities ended between me and the other foolish teenagers they had taken in that night. When I was led into the station, my drunken stupor in the process of being scared out of me, I saw the huge holding pen of stragglers from that night. There was a wide variety; from the homeless man who had been loitering in his spot for too long until the store manager finally called the cops on him, to other teens brought in on drug, lewd behavior, or assault charges from a brawl, to some domestic abuse cases. I had almost expected to see Sam and Travis in with the rest of the damned, but I realized that they were too smart for this kind of shit.

Despite their over-consumption of the substances that rotted their brain, they managed to retain all the knowledge they had on not getting caught. They had about a million excuses stored inside their heads for instances just like this. In fact, if Sam and Travis had been with me, I probably wouldn’t have even been in the station, waiting for a room so I could hear my sentencing. They would have gotten me out of it, one way or another. They were skilled at what they did, and it was their own talent. They probably wouldn’t have even been driving drunk in the first place; they didn’t have a car, and they were actually too smart for that kind of behavior. It made me angry for another time that night that the one time I decide to go back to my habit brought upon by my friends, they weren’t there to bail me out. No one was there to bail me out.

I must have waited alone in the processing room for hours. I knew what I was being charged with, underage drinking, driving without a license, and driving under the influence - just to name a few - but they needed to get me a lawyer… and contact my parents. Or something like that. I wasn’t sure about anything. I was still seventeen to them, a minor, and a fucking child. Even if the crimes I had committed were adult in nature and my eighteenth birthday was only a few months away by that point, I was still a fucking child.

When I was sitting in the cold and gray room, waiting for everything to fold in on itself, I found a calendar. I looked at it, and nothing computed. It was in the beginning of fucking April. It seemed like it was only yesterday that it was January, or even February and I was waiting outside that fucking liquor store with Sam and Travis, ready to get hammered. The time had gone by so fast, it fucking slipped through my fingers. And this time, unlike all of my other high school years, I had been completely sober for it all. I had been with Gerard, in his apartment, only sipping on the wine that had caused me to act the way I did that night. Gerard had been my vice then, and I was consuming him every fucking day. I spent all my time at his place, but that time didn’t seem to register that the time I had spent with him, was actually gone now. I was almost done high school. It was April; I only had a few months left, if I hadn’t completely fucked up in school. I had been skipping and missing time to be with Gerard then as well, not caring about the consequences. I hadn’t cared about consequences all my life, but as I was forced to sit in a police waiting room, I thought long and hard about them.

If I failed this year, I would be stuck in that holding pen again, seeing the same fucking faces and going through the same motions without feeling. I had been pulling a high sixty average before; I didn’t have a lot left to fall before I flunked and completely failed at life. I may even turn into Jason – the guy who was still twenty and living perpetually inside of that building because it was the only thing he knew how to do. The thought scared me – even more than what was coming my way inside this cell of a place.

I had to stop dwelling on the bad, I commanded myself. The fact that it was April meant that it would be my birthday soon. I would be eighteen and an adult by age. I could do as I pleased. It wasn’t until the middle of May where I would finally get this honor, but now, that was a little more than a month away. I crushed my eyes closed then, heaving a deep sigh and turning completely away from the calendar. If I had only been more patient, I thought to myself. If I had only maybe waited for another month to fight with Gerard, maybe I wouldn’t have been in this mess. If I had been eighteen, though, we probably wouldn’t have fought to begin with. If I was eighteen, society wouldn’t have a chance at ripping us apart. I would be an adult and could fucking make my own decisions. No one could tell me who I could or couldn’t be with. If I was eighteen, everything would have been easier.

But I wasn’t eighteen. I was seventeen and it was a horrid number. It meant I was arrested like an adult, treated like a no good teen, and fucking felt like a child. My parents were being called at that moment, and I needed to get a lawyer to represent me in my charges. I may even have to go to Goddamn court. I had made one of the biggest mistakes of my life at seventeen years old, and the age’s only saving grace was that this probably wouldn’t go down on my permanent record. I was only a child, after all.

 

When I was finally ushered into the interrogation room, things started to change. A female officer had come and gotten me, her voice sweet and soothing. She even held the doors open for me as I walked the short distance through the sterile hallway. I couldn’t understand why she was being so nice, when everyone else prior had practically spit on me. I chalked it up to her being a girl, and more sympathetic. Blue eyes were hidden under the brim of her hat, and I could tell that her dark hair, though tied up in a matronly bun, was curly and flowing. She was stuck into a drab uniform like everyone else there, but I could still see youth in her eyes. Maybe it was that youth that made her identify with me in some way, and be nicer, but it still didn’t seem like a justified excuse, especially when I arrived in the small black room and was met by the same officer who had arrested me.

He was a tall man, in his mid-thirties perhaps, with a stocky build and a tough exterior. He had been harsh with me before, shaking his head and lecturing me constantly before he dumped me off in the processing room, but now, there was something different to him. He smiled as I sat down, baring his ugly, stained teeth. The chair creaked beneath my weight, and it made me jump a little, to which he gave me another sympathetic smile for. His hands were gingerly placed over some documents in front of his chest, and offered me some water (which I declined) before we started to talk and he smiled again. It was a weak and almost trivial grin, but it was there nonetheless, and I couldn’t place it.

“Hello, Frank,” he said, nodding his head with the greeting. “How are you?”

I furrowed my brows suspiciously. “I’ve been better.”

The cop laughed, seeming very forced, ruffling the papers in front of him. “I think that’s a fair declaration. My night’s been pretty rough, too. You’re not the only one I’ve picked up, but you’re sure the most interesting case.”

I said nothing back, mostly because I wasn’t sure what was going on yet. Why on earth was he being nice to me now? I thought for a moment that he was playing good-cop, bad-cop or some other foolish thing, but he was the only one in the room. It was just me, him, the see-through mirror across the far wall. There was a table that kept us apart and bridged the tension into something we could both feel with his next words. I wondered where my parents were in that brief moment, and why he was questioning me alone. I always thought that since I was a minor, I needed someone with me. Perhaps this wasn’t on the record, perhaps this was something entirely different.

“Do you know someone named Gerard Way?” he asked me, his eyes condescending yet caring at the same time.

My heart stopped in my throat. How the fuck did he know about Gerard? I had never heard the man’s last name before, other than the time I had briefly stolen his wallet to look at his license.

“Why?” I barely questioned, my lip quivering. The room was dimly lit, I figured for added interrogation effect, but it paid off at the moment so he couldn’t see how fucking nervous I was.

“Because you were driving his van,” he stated smoothly not letting any emotion through, but managing to not be a hard-ass about it. “And I am assuming you did not buy wine for yourself.”

My heart remained in my throat, my tongue swelling around it and making me unable to talk. What was I supposed to say to that, anyway? They knew I was driving his van; they probably ran the plates and his name popped up.

“I know him. He’s my art teacher,” I blurted out the rehearsed semi-lie I had told Jasmine a few days ago.

“Did you steal his van?” he asked me next, his facial expression already knowing the answer.

“No, not at all!” I immediately answered, not wanting another charge to add to the list. But after I had finished, I began to realize what I had done.

“So, he let you have his van, and the keys to them?” he repeated what I had said, adding things in a slow voice. “And the wine?”

I had been sitting up straight before, my attention peaking at the stealing accusation. The only thing I had ever stolen from Gerard had been the cigarettes, and even after that was said and done, he didn’t care. But it wasn’t stealing the officer had been accusing me of, it was something entirely different. He was implying things, asking questions that I thought would never get asked; hoped I would never get asked.

They knew about Gerard and I. It was the only logical answer they could form in their minds with the evidence presented to them. I was a seventeen-year-old child, driving an older man’s van who had given me alcohol. Why on earth would a forty-something artist living in seclusion give a young boy everything he ever wanted unless there were sexual acts involved? Fuck, people’s minds were twisting and turning accusations that they had no proof of into the truth. It was the truth, though, in some regard. Gerard and I were participating in sexual acts, but fuck, they had it all wrong. He wasn’t taking advantage of me. He wasn’t hurting me in any way. I wanted to do those things, I wanted to be with him, and I was the one who had started it all first. I had kissed him that night, I had proposed this offer to him and I had said yes to it all. They had it all wrong, but I couldn’t correct them without digging myself into a deeper hole.

I stopped talking after that. The officer tried to ask me a few more questions, easing into a semi-relaxed state, and trying to convince me that he was my ‘friend’. Friend or not, I was not saying a fucking word about anything Gerard and I had done. I was already going to get fried for my little mistake tonight. I didn’t have to bring Gerard down with me, and I didn’t need to elicit sympathy for an event I had wanted.

I began to realize why the officers were suddenly being nice to me, and why I was alone with the male officer first. They were trying to be nice to the poor, little rape victim. I was no longer only a fucking delinquent who drove drunk. I was an abuse victim, trying to get away from the old pedophile who took advantage of me when I was in the intoxicated state he had put me in. Just the fucking idea of it made me sick to my stomach.

The officer and I sat in the room together alone for what seemed like forever, no words exchanged between the two of us. He constantly shuffled through the papers in front of him when he realized I was no longer going to talk, and that he wasn’t going to force me. He shouldn’t have even been asking me these questions alone, without my parents consenting to it. He was only trying to get me to confess to something, so it would be easier to draw it out of me later when I did have to put it all on record. He knew that if I had been raped (I still felt sick even thinking of that word) that I wouldn’t have wanted to confess it with my parents, or even a lawyer around. If there was fucking anything to confess to at all. He was trying to be my friend, bending the law so he could be the good man and put a pedophile away. It made me sick. I already had enough friends. I didn’t look at him until they informed me that my parents had arrived.

They only let one parent into my interrogation room, and I was relieved when I heard my mother’s small steps approach behind me. I couldn’t look at her directly, and I didn’t want to; I was just glad it was her and not my father with me. They were probably restraining him in the waiting area, while my shell of a mother sat beside me. When I eventually cast my gaze over to her, she was close to tears and trembling. She listened fixedly as the officer talked to her like I wasn’t in the room, occasionally pointing to me like I was some object. I didn’t mind, though; I stared off into space and pretended I didn’t exist.

“It seems that Frank is in a bit of trouble here,” the cop started, his firm gaze reappearing as he motioned to his paper. My mother forcibly still, not bothering to look where he pointed. I watched her, his words mere background noise. “Driving under the influence, though it wasn’t too much, he was still over the legal limit. He’s also not of age to even be drinking, nor does he have a license. You probably know all of that. These can be minor issues, but when all lumped together like this, it can be tricky. Also, there is the matter of the car he was found driving…”

My head looked over at the cop now, noticing the distinct change in his voice. He glanced at me with a wrought expression. I couldn’t tell if he pitied me, or doubted me as he went on.

“Frank assures me he has not stolen the vehicle. But the circumstances around it are rather peculiar.” Again, that look, only it lingered longer and was coupled with a sigh as he went back to my mother intently. “Do you know a man named Gerard Way?”

My mother raised her brows. “No…should I?” She looked at me frantically, hoping I could answer her question. I stared at the gray table.

The officer went on to explain some things, but I tried not to listen. It was hard – considering everything they were talking about was about me, but I couldn’t take it right then. I didn’t want to. I kept staring at the gray table, letting the whir of the lights above us overtake my ears.

The whole thing took hours and lifetimes away from me. I still continued to sit there and do nothing, listening to them rattle off my charges. I couldn’t help it when my body stiffened as they started to mention Gerard again, that slight twisted twang to their voices. I tried to avoid any and all questions, and not to give myself away at all, but they must have seen me squirming. About the fifth time his name was mentioned, and I practically shuddered, the officer extended his hand across the table so it came into my line of vision.

“Frank,” he said, when I still didn’t look up and my body stiffened even more. “Is there anything you want to say for yourself? For anyone else?”

“No,” I mumbled right away, not finding strength in anything I was doing. I was tired, tipsy, and fucking embarrassed. I wanted this to end.

“Frank, look at me,” the officer declared, more persistent.

“No,” I said again, a little stronger.

“Frank-”

“I said ‘no,’ okay? Just no.”

I brought my head up this time, looking him in the eyes. I was hardly yelling, hardly defiant, but my message got across. I didn’t need to be loud and angry. I was still a child, yeah, but most adults tried to put the rights of a child first and foremost. When I was saying no – whether it was to the abuse or their questioning – it stuck. I knew in the pit of my stomach that this would not be the last of it, but for right now, it was late. I was tired, and so was everyone else. The officer dropped it, for now, and turned back to my mother.

And that’s when I started to notice her, too.

The only noise in the deadly silence that proceeded was my mother’s faint whimpering. I crushed my eyes closed and felt something inside of me shatter, knowing that I had made my mother cry. She had trusted me all those days and nights where I had disappeared, showing up hours late. She had seen how happy I was and let it all roll off of her back. She had put it in the back of her mind, and now that her little boy was being charged with crimes and something a lot more serious, she couldn’t take it anymore. I could hear her breaking beside me, the tears slowly spilling down her face. I didn’t want to turn around and look, and even as the officer finally got the hint that all of us were done for the night (other legal proceedings would come later and deals sorted out), I still didn’t look at my mother’s face. I had been afraid when I first stepped out into the waiting area of finding my father, but I figured it would be easier to be yelled at over and over again, than to take another minute of the slow tears spilling from her eyes.

“Your father is at home,” my mother’s voice corrected my thoughts, surprisingly clear. She appeared at my shoulder, a frail hand covering her face. Her light brown hair seemed to be littered with gray strands as I looked down on it, avoiding her eyes at all costs. I merely nodded to her statement and started to head out to the parking lot, thanking God over and over again that was where my father was. He probably couldn’t contain his anger enough when he found out I had been arrested. I wondered what else he knew, and what else the fucking lying cops told her on the phone.

The car ride was stiff and quiet, the air seeming to crack if I breathed too hard into it. I kept my vision straight ahead, only looking out at the blackened night sky from the passenger seat. My mother’s labored breathing had subsided significantly, and was coming out in even gasps again. She would occasionally stutter into a quivering baby’s breath, but she would recover quickly, and though I tried my hardest not to look at her, my gaze wandered over to her frail body.

She was never a large woman, a few inches shorter than myself, and she was never overweight. She gained weight from years of sedentary house work, from having me, and as her metabolism slowed down. It could have been the way the lights from the other passing cars reflected off her face as we drove, but she looked as if she had lost at least thirty pounds. She was so thin, and I swear her eyes had started to sink back into her skull. She was tired; she was translucent at best, and soon fading into a ghost who felt too much and too little at the same time. Her face was puffy and damp from the small crying she had done, but the flow was stopped now. I could see the cracks of red on her pristine white eyes from outpour of emotion still trying to not break through. My heart sunk in my chest when I realized she was fighting the tears even as she drove.

“Gerard…” she suddenly stated randomly on the car ride home. Her eyes widened as she said the man’s name that now everyone was suspicious of. Her head glanced over towards me, her lips twisted into a shocked countenance. “Jared. The man on the phone.”

I turned away from her body then, shifting alongside the car’s uncomfortable seating. I wanted to jump out of the moving vehicle. I couldn’t believe my mom’s memory. She had remembered when Gerard had phoned me, on that night so long ago when he had asked for beer to be brought to his place. She had asked me who he was, and I had only said a friend. That was back when he was just a friend, before everything had exploded together in a mix of paint, wine, and lies. I kept turning away from her, and I didn’t answer.

“I thought he was your guitar teacher?” she asked suddenly, her voice gaining back some strength. When the officer had spoken to my mother, he had called Gerard an art teacher. She had no idea I had been interested in art; she thought those long nights I had been disappearing with my guitar in hand. She had snooped in my room that one day and made that conclusion in her mind. I had asked to take a music course, not an art one. So far as she knew, the last art project I had done was finger painting in third grade. I had never said a word against the conclusions she came up with, but now I couldn’t be silent and let her work things out for herself. My silence had gotten me this way in the first place.

“He is,” I lied, but at least I was saying something. “Gerard is my guitar and art teacher. He taught me things and I cleaned his brushes…”

“Frank,” my mother’s voice cut me off. She was never one to interrupt people, and that quality had practically been engrained in her since the day she had married my father. He didn’t allow people to interrupt; it was an unmentioned, but well known, rule. She was breaking it now, because he wasn’t around and because she needed to. She was finally gathering up strength that I didn’t know she had. She had been beaten down so much these past few weeks, covering for my lies that she was finally rebelling against them.

“Frank,” she repeated, breathing deeply and glancing at me every so often as she drove. “You don’t have to tell me everything. I’m your mother, but I can understand you wanting to keep some things private.”

It almost hurt her to say that, her lip quivering and breath hitching again. I wanted to hug her so hard right then, because I knew she thought I was in trouble. I was, but it wasn’t what everyone was thinking.

She continued, though, without my touch. “You don’t have to tell me things. But please, please,” she begged, her voice raw and needy. She looked at me, the darkness of the car and night hiding her desperate eyes until a traffic light washed over them. “Don’t lie to me anymore.”

Her words hit me hard in the chest. The silence that I had kept with her before may have been hard, but I knew my fabrications were worse, and getting worse by the minute. The truth was in the process of being exposed. I knew they had nothing physical on Gerard yet. I knew they couldn’t drop everything and arrest him only based on wild allegations. They held no truth in their lies against him, but then again, if I was handing wild lies right back into their faces, then this was going to get nowhere fast. I had to stop lying, because it was going to get found out – I was already found out – they were going to see an error in my words. My mother had already caught one, and she was beginning to unfold things before her eyes. They had no proof, and fuck, I wasn’t going to give them anything incriminating. I had to stop lying, but I couldn’t tell the truth. I was going to shut my mouth and never open it, if not to save myself, then to save my mother.

My lips had been parted, breathing in and out and trying to think of what to say. When I realized it was nothing, I closed my mouth and turned my head back towards the windshield while my mother drove home. I didn’t say a word. Her tears began to dry up, while her sadness only deepened.