Be a Doll(77)

If he didn’t want me to say a word, I’d act.

I padded in his office and sidestepped him until I faced him. His face was turned down and what I saw made my stomach drop and my chest hurt. The pain on his face was more than just the panic attack’s doing, it was obvious. The way his eyes, empty, looked at nothing, the way his colorless mouth was twisted in a pained expression and how withdrawn he appeared… that told me he was haunted, still very much living through the loss of his brother as if it was yesterday. By living a life he thought Max would have, he didn’t let himself grieve properly and put to rest his emotions regarding losing his twin and how guilty he felt. Instead, it festered inside of him, growing and growing and only his strong will contained it inside, propelling himself farther in life, staying busy and losing himself a bit more every day in his job and meaningless life. Meaningless because it wasn’t the kind of life he would have chosen for himself in other circumstances.

Standing in front of him and witness a man like Mathis in such a state, I didn’t know what to do or say. He said he wanted to be left alone, that he didn’t want me to talk, but then again he could have closed the door in my face and he could order me to go now, but he didn’t do it. No, instead he did something that made it impossible for me to do nothing.

He looked deeply into my eyes, not as if he was looking through my soul, but as if begging me to see everything inside his, as if asking me to do something to lessen the pain incapacitating him.

I cupped his stubbly cheek and watched him shivering in a frown. “I will not tell you that you can’t keep doing this because your brother wouldn’t want to see you in such pain. I will not tell you that no matter what your brother is still with you in your heart because you already know it. I will not tell you that you can’t live somebody else’s life, a life you have no idea if it’s what he’d have chosen for himself when he reached adult life because I think a part of you already knows it, otherwise you wouldn’t be in such pain. What I’m going to tell you is that your love for your brother will never cease, that you’ll always miss him and that by erasing who you truly are or would have been, your parents, your mother, lost both of her boys. You owe it to yourself and Max and your family to be happy, to be yourself. Now, you need to find the strength to let Max go for real this time.’’

He pushed away from me then and shook his head, but not before I saw the welling tears in his eyes, tears he fought to push away and succeeded in doing so, but his chest rose harder still and his big body swayed. He went to the big chair behind his desk and let himself drop. He didn’t bat an eyelid at the plaintive sound the desk chair made at the abrupt way his weight dropped onto it.

“What are you trying to do?’’ he asked, his voice so rough it was like gravel to my ears, a gravel that scratched at his throat to claw its way out of the tightness I was sure was there.

“I don’t really know.’’ I looked down at my bare feet and my toenails painted in a burgundy color like my fingernails. It was definitely easier to look down than to be the witness of the kind of pain Mathis shouldered, the kind of pain he imposed on himself. “If I say I’m trying to help you’re going to say I have no qualifications and no right to put my nose in what doesn’t concern me, and you wouldn’t be wrong.’’

“Shut up then.’’

His deep sigh made me look up. His shoulders were hunched, his back not straight like usual as he leaned over his elbow and his face in his big hands, his fingers clawing at his skull in his thick, dark hair. He looked like a defeated man, down to his last strength, but I bet he had already been like this before. He was the kind of man who even down, he got back up to his feet and soldiered on even if you wouldn’t think it possible. He made the impossible, possible.

“I will,’’ I said and saw him pulling his face away from his hands to stare at me. His dark eyes weren’t hard this time, they held questions and uncertainties, something he probably rarely felt. “I won’t hound you because I’m nobody to you, Mathis. I’m passing through in your life, but I think someone needed to tell you that you can’t live someone else’s life. After all, we only have one life. Don’t waste yours because of your grief.’’

I didn’t wait for him to find his words as I turned around and walked out, ready to go to bed, to hide from him and his eyes that pierced my heart. I needed some space too, needed to remind myself that it’s not because he opened up to me that it meant something. I was an easy choice because I wasn’t a part of his family, not really and if I were I wouldn’t be for long. I was the outsider and it’s often easier to confide in an outsider who was a stranger to all the mess in one’s life.

But I did know, it was pain. That, I knew really well even if I ignored it. Pain was my best friend, a friend I had by my side from the day my parents died randomly murdered in front of me when I was five. Pain had never left my side, but over the years I had learned to push it away and hide behind it. Smile, Laugh and Pride. These three had been my buffers, but now… I had a feeling that they wouldn’t be able to hold back Pain or mute Heart.





MATHIS


Bleary-eyed, cranky and with a bourbon issued headache from late night consumption, I nodded at Jonatan and walked in my office without a word. The vast office shouldn’t make me feel like air was rare in it, but the fact was after last night and what transpired with Lila, what I told her, what I faced about my life and not just in my head, but out loud and to someone else, working and being stuck in this office was the last thing I wanted.