Isobel Part 2

There was a message from work on the answer phone. They begged in formal words to know he was okay. He deleted it. Perhaps he would go in tomorrow but at that moment the night was enough of a hurdle to get through, His first thought was alcohol but he had lost three months to it’s agonising stupor and he couldn’t go back to it. At first it numbed but then it pulled it’s cruel trick jack-knifing his chemical equilibrium. It made everything so much harder to bear. He turned on the television and cruised the mainstream channels for the local news. He heard some suited old man talking about the girl he had seen. He spoke of her having a family, friends, college. That girl who had nothing on top of that building had everything. The pictures were of the people in their winter coats who had prayed and begged and cried. In their feeling for that girl they poured out their grief at the world in general, at their cheated lives specifically. He wondered why they wept. It was a catharsis usually only world terror attacks and princesses dying brought about. As he watched it all he imagined that girls family and felt that heart squeezing unbearable loneliness he had lived with for so long now. But for once it wasn’t for him, for Isobel. It was for that girl’s mother. The woman who now had a ghost instead of a daughter; a haunted, shaken image that would confront her every moment, awake or asleep.
He was back outside and hurrying towards the train station before he’d made a decision. The train was quick and the movement stopped him from thinking at all. It created a repetition of images in his mind. His “safe” images of Isobel. The ones he had vetted for the more painful memories. The ones that made him feel a sort of settledness that may one day translate to his version of happiness. He hadn’t brought his key. Come to think of it he couldn’t remember where it was. It had been five months since he had crossed the threshold of this house. He had stood outside of it twice since then but been so blinded by the memories of him and Isobel leaving the warm love of this place that he had been unable to enter. Those times like this one were unannounced. He knocked this time without hesitation and waited for it to be answered. When a middle aged woman opened it neither of them spoke. It took her a second to understand what it meant to see him standing there. They looked at each other with an understanding that he appreciated more than anything at that moment. She wrapped her arms around him as if he was six years old and his tears fell just as readily.
“Oh come in.” She said through her own tears.
Once inside the familiar living room with its too hot snugness and fresh polished scent he felt tears to be uncomfortable and odd. He wiped them hastily from his cheeks and unfallen from his eyes. His mum must have felt the same because she had her back to him as she offered a cup of tea before hurrying off to the next room. He was glad of a few moments to be here alone. It suddenly seemed strange to him that he had felt so confronted by the idea of his parent’s home. The sofa had a new deep blue and purple embroidered throw over it but underneath he knew it’s once red velvet was a frayed pink, almost threadbare on the arms and on one patch at the top of the far right hand side. Jasper the fifteen year old, one-eyed cat he’d always had an uneasy relationship with snored on in a belligerent manner on top of an armchair near the fire. Nothing had changed. The anchors of his childhood had held. Perhaps that was what he couldn’t bear in those first three twilight months. It had angered him so much that the world walked past his window, that people on the television could be frivolous enough to still make Eastenders or news programmes about a population he would have gladly sacrificed for one more minute of Isobel’s company. This train of thought had led him in a more proactive mood to conclude that it was offensive to her memory that television still existed. He had thrown his own television out of his window. This was the ground floor of his flat. It did almost no damage but he had been satisfied by the swift, contained activity of removing it from the table and manoevering to the sill before letting go. Afterward he had drawn the curtain and returned to the sofa to stare at the empty space in front of his wall. It made him feel exactly the same as the television had. Angry. By this time the familiar malaise had returned so he had felt no need to take his anger out on the wall, the space or anything else.
The tea spilled slightly as his mum placed it on the coaster in front of him on the coffee table. He looked up slowly and met her eyes.
“Sorry…”
“I’m…”  they both began. They smiled. She moved closer and sat on the sofa next to him.
“I understand. I mean I understood why you didn’t want to…to be here…or…”
She trailed off but he nodded. He had never doubted that she would but he still knew what it must have felt for her to be so cut out of his grief.
“Did you see that girl? On the news?” He asked.
“The one who jumped?”
He nodded again.
“Yes. Awful, isn’t it?”
“I saw her.” She looked a little uncomprehending as if he was repeating the fact that he had seen her on the telly.
“I saw her jump. In town, I was on my lunch break.” It felt very important that he explain all of this to his mum.
“I saw her standing up there and I willed her not to. I knew she would though so I turned away. I didn’t want to see. I wanted to pretend she had lived but I heard everyone shout and scream and I knew she had jumped. Mum I thought about her parents and I thought about you”. He stopped abruptly. He had gabbled like a child with no punctuation and none of his casual, lyrical sarcasm. His mum hugged him.
“How have you been?” She asked.
“Drunk”. He looked up at her with a wry smile.
“Your sister told us about that.” He raised an eyebrow,
“So you know that I was quite the late night entertainer in my street for a while?”
“If I didn’t I do now”. She returned his eyebrow raise exactly.
“Yeah. I’m okay. I went back to work a few weeks ago.” He didn’t tell her that he only went when he felt like it and frequently wandered off mid-day never to return.
“How is it?”
“As mind-numbing as ever. Should have thought of that avenue before I took the booze route. Generally less accidental indecent exposure”. To her credit his mum laughed. A proper laugh. He felt a real smile playing on his face.
“You didn’t? Oh no. I don’t want to know about it.” He laughed despite himself.
“Mum that was a degrading and humiliating episode in my pain filled existence.” The dramatic delivery made her laugh even more until she was crying and grabbing at intakes of breath. The cat opened his one eye and jumped from the top of the chair disapprovingly. It left the room with a shake of his fur and a disgusted arch to his back. It felt so good to be laughing with his mum. To be laughing at all. His humour to anybody before had just been pitiful, eliciting an embarrassed titter at best. Here was the woman who felt his pain most accurately hooting at the idea of his desperate behaviour.
“I dread to think of the state of your flat.” His Mum commented after they’d taken a few calming sips of their tea and settled back into their respective ends of the sofa.
“Oh you’d shudder.” He smiled.
“Why don’t you stay here this evening?” He began to shake his head and stopped himself.
“Do you think Jasper’d approve?” He asked shyly.
“Oh of course not.”
“In that case yeah, I think I will.” He wondered if it were some sort of strange shifting of balance that made him not want to go home. Now he had conquered his demons here they had moved into his flat while he wasn’t looking. More like the prospect of clean sheets and actual breakfast in the morning looked like a better bet this side of nine p.m. There was a loud thump overhead followed by the quick creak of the stairs before his Dad appeared at the door.
“Hello.” He offered as if Chris had just arrived.
“Hi Dad.”
“Did you see that terrible thing on the news? That girl? Just jumped. Just like that.”
“Chris was there. He saw her.” His Mum interjected.
“Oh no. You didn’t son?”
“I didn’t see her jump. I left before then. I could tell she was going to.” His Dad tutted and shook his head.
“Want a beer Chris? Lainey?” Chris agreed with a quick ‘yep’ and a nod while his mother pursed her lips thoughtfully before saying ‘go on then.’ His Dad brought the beer in glasses for himself and Elaine but gave Chris the bottle alone. He was careful to be attuned to how people liked their drinks served and both of his children preferred their beer straight from the bottle, although not so with a can he had noticed. If it were a beer in a can he would have decanted Chris’s too.
“Chris is staying tonight.”
“Good idea.” His Dad replied.
“How’s work?” His Dad offered after a pause in which he tasted and savoured his first sip of the beer.
“Dull.” Chris replied. His Dad just nodded and Chris suspected he’d really been trying to find out if Chris went to work at all.
“Why don’t you move on from there?” His Mum offered.
“Don’t you sound like Janey.”
“Well.” His Mum looked sheepish so he knew that his sister and her had been discussing the subject.
 “I don’t know. Maybe I will do something else. Just as soon as I figure out what.” The subject changed and changed again and Elaine couldn’t find a way back so he knew he was safe. Too much had changed already. He couldn’t give up his desk or the trained-monkey level of programming he pushed through. It wasn’t the money. The money was awful. But they let him walk out at one and not come back for three days. They let him sit undisturbed for hours while he stared motionless at the screen. They let him come in in yesterdays clothes smelling of booze on the days when he couldn’t be on his own for a second longer. Today he felt good but he knew he wasn’t yet past any of that. Only one beer he told himself, just one.