Present
LENNOX VANISHED AFTER DISAPPEARING INTO the great unknown of William’s upstairs quarters to get high. It didn’t bother me in the least that he removed himself from this intervention Violet was trying to pull. What did bother me was that I was left alone with her.
Years had passed since everything went down. Time moved on, life continued with the same cycle of sunrise, sunset, day after day. I went on to survive, which was very different from actually living.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed my life in New York—friends like Joy, my career, my clients, my cute apartment that belonged to me and me alone. But when you endured the kind of heartache Lennox and Violet thrust upon me, painful memories remained and never stopped haunting you.
Ever.
Especially when the ghost responsible for your torment was tangible, within your grasp, staring back at you with the same memories plaguing her, too.
“Please sit, Eden. Can we please try to be civil for the sake of . . . for the greater good?” I imagined she stopped herself from asking me to consider Lennox’s well-being. I didn’t care about Lennox’s well-being. At least that’s what I told myself. But I was here. I’d come running, those haunting memories pricking my subconscious and getting the better of me. Making me feel all over again.
I took a seat at the kitchen table and sipped at the water Violet poured me. “You have no idea how badly I don’t want to be here. This goes against everything I’ve taught myself—by myself. This brings me ten steps back and sticks me smack dab in the middle of a time warp of memories I’ve tried for years to banish from my brain.” I didn’t understand why I was being so candid. She didn’t deserve it, but I needed to get it out. Maybe it was for myself. Sometimes you needed to verbalize something to make it feel real. Maybe that’s what I was doing as I poured my heart out to a woman responsible for tearing it apart.
“I understand and I’m grateful. You have no idea how much I appreciate this. I know we don’t deserve this. We’ve done so much for you to hate us.” Violet cried, seeking forgiveness and expressing her gratitude. I examined her sullen features to discern whether it was an act or the real deal. Something in my gut, an old pang of affection for my flesh and blood, told me she was being genuine. I kept that in the corner of my mind, hoping to rack up enough assurance to eventually be able to show some remorse toward her. But her use of the terms “we” and “us” made my skin crawl. “We” and “us” used to be me and Lennox. She ripped that away from me and shamelessly replaced “me” with “her,” as if they were just words, not real, living people.
“Enough with the small talk,” I announced, taking charge. I needed control or I’d unravel all over again. “What’s the game plan, Violet. What am I here to do?”
Her head wilted with an agonizing sigh. She tangled her fingers together in a show of nerves, her breath shallow and uneven. She wept and I narrowed my eyes, evaluating her performance, separating sham from truth. When she lifted her head and her cocoa colored eyes met my honey tinted ones, the truth was hard to ignore.
She was desperate. She was lost. She had no plan at all.
That angered me more than it scared me, and I started to yell all over again. “Are you serious, Violet? I don’t know how to fix this! I don’t know what you want me to do! This isn’t my problem and I can’t make it my problem anymore. I have a life! I’ve moved on. I can’t—” Emotions tangled themselves in my throat and expelled from my eyes as tears. “I can’t do this!”
“Please, Eden. Please. I’m begging you. I don’t know what else to do. I’d leave. I want to leave. I want to be better. I have been. I can be. I can change. I know that now. But . . . He’s so helpless. And I did this to him. I can’t just walk away and leave him to die. Because he will, Eden. He’ll die. He’s worse than ever. He’s in over his head and there’s no talking to him. At least, not if it’s coming from me.”
“He never had a problem listening to you before,” I bit out. “He listened to you when you showed him where to find his next fix. He listened to you when you lured him into your bed. He was mesmerized by you as if you were some mysterious, rare flower, Violet.” I laughed despite the anger and sadness enveloping me, the irony too poignant to ignore. “His wonderful, beautiful, exotic violet. He’s all yours now. Has been for a long time. Why won’t he listen to you? Your word isn’t gospel anymore? How come?”
We hadn’t had it out in years. I was always too proud to listen to what she had to say. I didn’t want to know details. I tried hearing them out at first. I even tried sympathizing, rationalizing that drugs played a huge part in everything. It was all too much to handle. The accident, the addiction, the secrets, the heartbreak. A few days after I found Lennox and my sister together in her bed, I left for New York and didn’t turn back. I ignored countless phone calls, emails, texts, and unannounced visits. Then one day, they stopped. They gave up. And so did I.
Breaking me from the vivid recap of the last few years, Violet started to sob and then knelt down in front of me, our faces inches apart. “Don’t you see? He never loved me. He needed me. I was the only one who understood. Who could sympathize with him. Who knew how to make it go away. That’s why he turned to me, Eden. Not because you were lacking, but because he was. I know this now. I’ve known it for a very long time. You’ve been tormented with memories, but I live with the reality every day. I may have been some rare and exotic flower to him once, but you? Eden, you were and always will be his entire garden.”
I HAD TO WALK AWAY. I needed some space, some normalcy, some Joy. I excused myself to the car with my phone in hand, and set off to take a short drive to clear my head. And vent. And maybe even cry a little.
Once the house of horrors was a distant blob in my rearview mirror, I signaled the Bluetooth to, “Call Joy.”
“Hey, babe. Still breathing?” she answered after a ring and a half.
“Barely, but yeah.” I sighed, the weight of the world still pressing heavily on my lungs.
“Talk to me.” I could visualize her at full attention, pushing aside whatever she was working on to make time for my shit. It was a Saturday, but that meant nothing to Joy. I’d bet my left eye she’d taken a stack of files home and was in the middle of dodging back and forth between client dilemmas. And yet, here I was piling yet another onto her workload.
“I need a break from here. Tell me what’s going on.” It would be good to hear the latest and greatest and temporarily get my mind off Lennox and Violet. I had no intention of falling behind at work for them, so my plan was to have Joy keep me up to speed while I was away.
“Oh, same old. This one’s sleeping with that one but needs us not to tell the other and to keep it out of the press. That new Macaulay-Culkin-in-the-making we acquired last week is having mommy issues, and by mommy issues I mean the kid’s mother is one overbearing pain in the ass. And, well—I have this covered, Eden. You know that. You’ve got nothing to worry about so unleash. Let me do what I’m here for.”
“Your duties as best friend do not include listening to me vent unendingly.”
“Um, of course they do! How many best friends have you had in your life? Do you not know how this works?”
“You never vent to me.”
“I have a boring life. I wish I could say I’m living vicariously through you, but I’d rather endure leg day at the gym for a month straight than walk one day in your shoes.”
I laughed, although this whole situation was so unfunny. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“I don’t mean to make light of it, babe. You know that, right? I’m just . . . I’m here for you, no matter what.”
“Thank you.” For some reason, those two words and Joy’s kindness choked me up. I found it hard to get them out this time. There was a lot to consider after seeing Lennox and speaking with Violet. Assessing everything made it real. I’d been called to help and I hadn’t the faintest idea how.
I hadn’t realized I was on a familiar autopilot to the cemetery until I pulled up to the section where my mother was buried. I put the car in park, listened to Joy coax me a little more, and then let go of my pride and did what she’d been waiting for. With my head in my hand and hot tears rolling down my cheeks, I unleashed. “This is all so fucked up, Joy. I don’t even know where to begin. Forget about the past . . . reliving all those painful memories isn’t the half of it. I didn’t think it would be this hard. I guess I was fooling myself, but—she’s my sister and I hate her for what she’s done. But I also hate seeing her this way; she’s a mess, in every sense of the word. And Len—” I didn’t even want to speak his name. “Him! He’s barely recognizable. He’s nothing like I remember. There’s no life in his eyes, no happiness. He’s a shell. It’s so fucking sad, Joy. I’m heartbroken all over again. I don’t want to be here. I want to snap my fingers and be back in New York, naïve to the hell these two have created since I left.
“And then I think, ‘this is all because I left, isn’t it? I’m to blame for this.’ I could’ve helped before it got to this. I could have stuck around, done what a caring human being would do, and prevented this whole mess from happening if I didn’t run away. I was a coward and now everything is so . . . fucked . . . up.” I wished I could say getting it out made me feel better. But it didn’t. It only made the reality of it all that much clearer. I was here but didn’t want to be. I had feelings for people undeserving of them. I felt guilty when I’d been wronged. I was all over the place and didn’t see a way out of this torment.
“Eden, don’t you dare go there! None of this is your fault!” Joy scolded through the phone, her own voice garbled by tears and laced with sadness.
“I wish I believed that.”
“You don’t have to right now. Deal with this however you see fit—kick, scream, and cry—but no one thinks this is your fault. Not me, not Lennox, not Violet. She wouldn’t have called you if she believed that. It may sound like I’m talking out of my ever-optimistic ass because I only know her from what you’ve told me—and believe me, I have formed my not-so-nice opinion of her—but I know, in my gut, that there is no way in hell she blames you for whatever’s left of the two of them. Furthermore, you’re a good fucking person, Eden! You’re a lot better than me. If my sister ever did anything like this to me I wouldn’t give her a second thought. I’d write her off, move on, and forget she even existed. But not you. There you are, being selfless, putting your own hurt aside to help them, even when they don’t deserve it.”
I took her lecture in, but the complimentary words didn’t sink in. I still couldn’t make the pain of living with this guilt and loss escape me. I hung up with Joy after a few more minutes of motivational reprimanding. She meant well, there was no denying that, but my demons were too deep, too persistent to ignore.
Mindlessly, I exited the rental car and found myself wandering to my mother’s graveside. It seemed liked forever ago since I’d been here. I hadn’t thought about leaving her so finally when I abandoned the rest of my past to rot here in Florida. Everything that meant anything to me seemed to be a tainted mess these days.
I swiped at the tears that lingered from my vent session with Joy. The sun gleamed hard and hot above where I plopped myself on the ground next to my mom. The grass atop the spot she was laid to rest when I was a little girl, too young to remember, was neatly mowed without a single weed or blade of grass out of place. Rocks and pebbles were placed on top of her tombstone, a bright bouquet of artificial purple flowers resting on the ground below her name. It was strange to realize that after all these years, someone still took the time to visit and keep things tidy. I wondered if it was William or Violet.
I let the quiet of the cemetery penetrate, imagining my mother’s arms around me when I needed them most. Peace washed over me for a fleeting second; a whiff of wildflowers, the flutter of a warm breeze, the imaginary voice of a woman who once sang me to sleep. It must have been the idea of a mother that I actually missed, because I longed for her even though I didn’t remember her.
I wished she was here to tell me what to do. How to deal with this. What to expect. But if she were, I supposed none of this would be happening in the first place. I couldn’t have known it back then, but the death of my mother was the catalyst for everything. All the bad, all the heartbreak, all the turmoil. To resent the dead—a woman I loved without knowing and felt without seeing—was a horrible thing, but it was the truth. Knowing that erased any peace I thought I’d find by coming here. Unlike so many others who’d lost a parent, I could not speak her name and ask her advice as if it was something I once had. It was pointless, an emulation of my trip back home.
After an hour or so of feeling sorry for myself, I left my mother with no more guidance than I arrived with. Joy’s words meant something, but not enough. My mother’s absence meant nothing, but oh, so much. I was fooling myself to imagine Lennox and Violet were the only lost souls in this wicked love triangle we’d created. We were all lost. Maybe too much so to ever be found again.
I returned to the car and started it. My tears had dried, the sadness waned, and the anger crept back into my heart. Stepping on the gas and leaving it all behind, I made up my mind. Life was too short. I’d already wasted a good part of it on Lennox and Violet; wasted too much of it feeling like shit. It was time I did something for myself. Something selfish. I couldn’t do this anymore. I wouldn’t do this anymore. It was time to go back to New York, to my life. It was time to say goodbye for good.