Silent Child(41)

I ripped down his poster of Iron Man. I threw his clothes out from the wardrobe. I tore the covers from his books. And then I stopped. I wiped my eyes. A sense of calm washed over me and I knew what I needed to do.

There was a second bottle of wine in the fridge so I opened that and took a long swig. There was no need for glasses anymore. Who did I need to impress? Who would care? There wasn’t anyone left. On my way through the house, I picked up a picture of us all together. Aiden was at the front wearing his Superman cape. I was behind him with my hands on his shoulders. And on either side of me were my parents. Dad on my left, Mum on my right. I didn’t cry, I just smiled and cradled the photograph to my chest.

I’d already turned my bedroom into something of a studio. There were a dozen or more paintings stacked up along the walls. I picked one up. It was a self-portrait. I hated this portrait. It was angry and torn-up. I’d used reds and blacks. My teeth were bared. I was ugly and ill in this painting, with booze-soaked eyes because I’d painted it while wasted, barely able to see the canvas with my blurred vision. I hated it. Setting down the wine bottle, I picked up the box-cutter knife I used to trim my canvasses and stabbed the knife into the canvas. Slowly, I dragged the knife down.

A great fire burned inside of me and I knew it was time to extinguish it. What was the point of life if it was just pain? I felt like I was standing inside a burning building and my only choices were to jump or let the fire consume me.

I was sick to death of the fire.

I collapsed onto the ground, dropping the torn-up canvas next to me, before taking out a second knife and placing it on my lap. Then I swigged from the bottle of wine. I was so numb from the alcohol, I figured it wouldn’t hurt at all. I thought of the fire roaring within me. I thought of all the shit I’d been through. I thought of Aiden’s coat pulled from the river and how the river continued on, rushing and gushing through the country while my son was rotting somewhere. I didn’t even get to bury him. I didn’t even get that much.

I cried out before I plunged the knife into my wrist. I screamed before it even hurt. The pain wasn’t from the gushing wound, it was from the fire.

Burning. Burning. My skin on fire. I screamed and I screamed until the flames finally died down. When I looked down, the blood poured out of the wound and I began to feel deliciously woozy. This was it. This was how I stopped the fire. If only I’d known sooner that it would be so simple. I started to fall back onto my bed, smiling. Finally, I had stopped the pain and finally I had found the inner strength to jump from the burning building.

But in my woozy state I didn’t hear the banging at the door, or the frantic voice calling my name. The door must have been open because Jake managed to get in within seconds. There were clattering footsteps and then my door was open. A face blurred before my eyes as he hooked his arms underneath my body, calling my name over and over again. There was pressure on my wrist and I was vaguely aware of the blood oozing between his fingers. I was vaguely aware of him saying ‘no, no, no, this wasn’t supposed to happen’ and then I woke up in a hospital bed.

It took me a long time to find gratitude for what Jake did for me that day. When I first woke up in that hospital room I hated him more than I’ve ever hated anyone. Hate was an emotion I’d never discovered before Aiden was taken from me in the flood. If you get to live your life without ever experiencing hatred, then count yourself lucky. Count your blessings. Hate isn’t something to crave or wish for. Never say you hate someone or something unless you really mean it, because hate is not finding a presenter on the telly annoying, or losing your temper with a sibling—it’s an all-consuming living thing that starts in your bowels and infects your blood until it blackens your heart.

And I hated myself. That’s the worst kind of hate.

I cried for a while. I went through shivers and shakes as the alcohol worked its way out of my body. I scratched at my bandages and refused to talk to Jake as he sat at my bedside reading from his art history books. He came day after day, reading to me as I sat sullenly with my head turned away. He read about the Renaissance, about Caravaggio and his brutish tendencies and murderous temper. He read about Picasso and his painting of Guernica. He read to me every day and soon enough I started to listen.

Instead of picking at my food I began to eat it. I requested water and orange juice rather than sipping on whatever was available when my throat went dry. When it was quiet in the hospital I turned on the television and watched a few daytime soaps. I even started replying to the nurses when they asked me how I was feeling.

When they released me, I found Mum and Dad’s cottage cleaned up and sparkling. Jake had sorted it all. He’d cleaned up my mess, removed all the alcohol from the house, hoovered, swept up the broken items and thrown them away. He’d even fixed up a few photograph frames I’d destroyed in my rage.

On the coffee table was a stack of books about Picasso, Caravaggio, Monet and more. John Singer-Sargent, Rembrandt, Da Vinci. There were brand new DVDs on the same subjects piled up next to the DVD player. I thumbed through the books, flicking past the text to get to the beautiful portraits, some of which I’d never seen before. Then I found a new set of paints on the dining room table with a get-well-soon card standing next to it. On the other side of the paints was an application form for a part time administration job at the school. I sat down and completed it.

I know some people might have been put off by the extraordinary lengths Jake went to, to aid my recovery. There are some women who might have found him creepy or overbearing, but it was everything I needed. Without even a hint of anything more than a platonic relationship, this man had taken his time to see me through the worst possible point of my life. I wasn’t capable of love at that moment—I was too dried out by all the hate that had burned inside me—but I was close to loving him. There was a strong sense of affection blossoming in my blackened shell.