We Are the Light(30)

The next thing I remember is unloading Dad’s car and my parents helping me move my clothes, bedding, and school supplies into my new dorm room—a single, meaning no roommate, which I had requested, thinking I would do better if I had somewhere to be alone from time to time. And then my parents and I were in my new van-sized room and Mom was talking about how much money they were shelling out for something that she herself never got a chance to do—because she had to commute to college—and then my father was shoving a twenty-dollar bill in my hand and, before I knew it, I was alone in my dorm room with the door closed.

I began pacing the seven feet of space I had, listening to all the other young men laughing and yelling and introducing themselves outside in the bustling hallway. It sounded so easy for them. Yet I was terrified of even opening my door, and I wouldn’t for days. As I stood there in that first hour—my heart pounding like it was trying to escape my rib cage and bounce its way back to my parents and our little house at the edge of Majestic, PA—I wondered how I alone had failed to acquire the instructions, whatever it was that the other boys had clearly received, the thing that allowed them to look each other in the eyes and slap each other’s backs and enter the communal bathroom without feeling as though their heads might explode.

Many of the boys on my floor knocked on my door and tried to introduce themselves, but I kept my head down and said little. I rebuffed as many invitations as it took for everyone to stop extending them to me.

I sat in the back of every single one of my classes and pulled a hood up over my head whenever I wasn’t in my dorm room.

I was miserable for a few weeks and I thought an awful lot about killing myself, to be honest, just to be free of the crippling anxiety and heavy depression, although I never settled on a plan and didn’t have the guts to even fantasize with specificity.

The pain grew and grew until I asked my parents if I could come home for a weekend, telling my mother that I missed her, which I knew would please her enough to acquiesce, which she did.

When my father came to pick me up on Friday night, he seemed off. Dad was always taciturn and maybe even generally uninterested in me, but on the drive home he was agitated, yelling at the other drivers on the road, mumbling to himself about traffic, and driving erratically. When I asked what was wrong, he’d only grumble something about his work, failing to use complete sentences, let alone make any sort of connection with his only son. And the longer I was in the car with Dad, the more certain I was that going home was a mistake.

My mother seemed pleased to see me, putting out a nice dinner and even serving her signature homemade apple pie, but when I lay down in my childhood bed that night, I replayed the glances she gave me over dinner—the way she looked at me when I said college was “fine” and that my classes were “fine” and that, “No, I hadn’t met any nice girls yet,” and I didn’t know what I wanted to major in, but, yes, I was grateful for the opportunity to go to college when so many other young people my age had to get jobs. As I lay in bed, replaying dinner, I started to see my mother’s grin as something akin to a wolf’s smile, and then I was seeing blood dripping from her mouth, which seemed ridiculous to me, so I wiped it from my mind and tried to picture what she had actually looked like.

“Smug” was the word I came up with.

Or maybe “satisfied.”

Every time I answered one of her questions, she had smirked, as if she was enjoying my failures—devouring my blunders as if they were bonbons.

When I looked over at my father I didn’t see him lift his eyes from his meal even once. There were no words of acknowledgment, let alone encouragement or compassion. When Dad had swallowed his last bite, he immediately pushed away from the table and flicked on the TV in the living room, leaving Mom and me to store the extra food in Tupperware containers before we washed and dried and put away the dishes. During that process, Mom had complained about her work and her friends and the way the food store arranged the aisles and how there weren’t enough parking spots at the local 7-Eleven and how my father didn’t notice that she had gotten her hair cut. “Lucas,” she said, “don’t you dare become anything like that stupid empty sack of a man out there on the couch because you’re all I have in this world.”

I went to bed shortly after that.

In the middle of the night, I woke up feeling panicked and tried to find the bathroom, but my childhood home had turned into a maze, which I frantically tried to navigate like a lab rat in search of cheese. I got the sense that there was no roof above me, and when I looked up, a gigantic version of my mother was sneering down at me, her face as big as the noonday sun. Her hot gaze instantly evaporated all the spit in my mouth. And then it felt like my throat was closing and I couldn’t breathe.

I sat up in my childhood bed gasping for air, telling myself it was only a dream. When I finally caught my breath, I exited my bedroom—half expecting to find myself trapped in a maze. The hallway led to the stairs, just like always, so I descended and slipped out the front door to do some counterclockwise circles around the house, which I did until the sun came up the next morning, which is when I asked my father to drive me back to school.

My mother complained bitterly about the cost of gas and my wasting money coming home for less than twelve hours, but soon Dad was behind the wheel and I was riding shotgun, only this time Dad decided to talk to me.

“Lucas,” he said, “I’m tired. And you’re a man now, so it’s time you and I leveled with each other. Your mother has worn me down. I did my best. I kept things together until you left the house, but I can’t keep pretending anymore.”