Chapter Two

    Chapter Two

 

 

    After I awoke in the motel I tired to reconstruct the events of the night before. The girl lying next to me was someone who I  had not seen for five years. Her name was Alison Matthews. The love of my life. I met Alison in junior high school, ninth grade to be exact. I had just moved to Fresno(my mother died that summer and my father didn’t want to live in Bakersfield anymore), so it was understandably difficult for me. But the very first day at Ronald Reagan Junior High, I met Alison.

    I first saw her in the cafeteria, I was sitting by myself when I spotted her out of the corner of my eye. She had long flowing brown hair, she was wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt ( so she had good taste) and skintight jeans. Not bellbottoms, but real f*****g jeans. I was instantly attracted to her. I was staring at her to be exact. A friend of hers noticed me staring, and by the time I could turn away it was too late.

    “Uh, excuse me?” her friend said with a hint of irritation “But, why the hell were you staring at my friend?” I tired to think of an answer, all I could get out was a series of uh’s and um’s. Alison smiled at me and said:

    “It’s okay, you can look at me if you want.” I chuckled. “Are you new here?”

    “Yeah, I just moved here in July.”

    “Where from?”

    “Bakersfield.”

    “Really? Why’d you move?”

    “Uh, my mother died and my dad thought it was for the best.” She sat down next to me and she put her arm around me.

    “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” It was the first time in my life that a woman other than my mother put her arm around me. I liked it, it felt good. Her hair smelled like chestnuts, it was a wonderful scent. “How did she die?” I tired to think of an answer that would give her question justice. That would give her enough information, but not too much.

    “She-she died in her sleep. That’s all I know.” She looked at me with utter sympathy.

    “I’m sorry.” Then I suppose it hit her that she didn’t even know my name. “What’s your name, by the way?”

    “Neil, Neil Stewart.”

    “Nice to meet you, Neil. I’m Alison. That’s Julia.”

    “Hi.” Julia said.

    “Good to know you.” Alison smiled at me, she had a very nice smile. She had the whitest teeth I had ever seen.

    “So, I guess we’ll see you around.” she said as she stood up.

    “Yeah, I’ll see you around.” the two girls walked back to their table and sat down. For the rest of the lunch period they kept glancing back at me, Alison especially. Every time they looked at me they would smile and giggle. I don’t know why, I don’t think they were making fun of me. When the lunch period was over they stood up and Alison came over to me.

    “Neil?” she said as I tired to get my things together.

    “Yeah?” I said as I looked up at her, she was smiling again.

    “Do you want to sit with us tomorrow, and for the rest of the year?” I was taken aback by this abrupt request.

    “You want me to sit with you?”

    “Yeah, why do you not want to?”

    “No, no it’s that. Its just-I just met you.”

    “Yeah?”

    “So, why do you want me to sit with you?”

    “Cause I like you.” I smiled, I blushed.

    “Really? You do?”

    “Yeah. You seem like a sweet guy. I want us to be friends. So, will you sit with us?”

    “Of course I will.”

    “Great.” she hugged me. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

    “Okay. Bye Alison.”

    “Bye.” She walked away. I was in love.

    Let me bring you back to the present.

    I looked down on the sleeping body of the woman I had loved for twenty years, she didn’t look any different. She was just as beautiful now as she was then. The first thing I thought, after I realised who it was next to me, was I can’t believe I am in the same bed as Alison. It was the single most selfish thought I had ever had in my entire life. I nudged her to try to wake her up. She didn’t even move. I shook her, no movement. I checked to see if she was breathing, she was. I shook her again, this time she moaned.

    “Stop it.” she said.

    “Hey, come on. Wake up Alison.” She slowly rolled over and when she saw my face she let out a sigh.

    “Neil? Is that you?”

    “It’s me Alison.”

    “Did we?”

    “I think so.” She groaned.

    “Oh God.”

    “What?”

    “We had sex.”

    “Yeah? Why is that so bad? It’s not like we haven’t had sex before.”

    “Because it’s you.” I didn’t know exactly how to take that. The last time I saw Alison was a very heart destroying experience, but to be offended that it was me that she had sex… “If I ever did have sex with you again, I would’ve liked it to be sober.” I let out a tiny laugh.

    “You probably would have the same reaction as when you were drunk.” She laughed. “That’s not that funny, Alison.” She smiled, I had forgotten her smile. I had forgotten just how much it lit up my life. I had forgotten how close I came to never seeing that smile again.

    “Do you have any idea how this happened?” I didn’t. I was disappointed to hear that she didn’t either.

    “I can barely remember yesterday morning. But after that-nothing. How about you?”

    “I can’t remember even seeing you yesterday. I don’t even remember-I don’t even remember leaving the house. Jesus Christ, how much did we drink?”

    “It had to have been quite a bit.” There was a silence in the room that made me want to shoot myself. “So, what do we do now?”

    “I guess I’ll go take a shower, and then-.”

    “No. I mean, what do we do now? We had sex Alison, we can’t just forget that it happened.”

    “What makes you think that I would want to?”

    “The last time we saw each other-.”

    “Neil, that was a long time ago.”

    “Yeah, I know. But the things you said to me-I’m still hurt by them.”

    “Neil, I said those things because I was angry at you. Not because I meant them.”

    It had been five years since that day, the day that I almost ruined both of our lives, on what should’ve been her happiest. But let me take you back to the second day of school in 1978. The first day that I sat with Alison and her friends. The day I fell in love.

    Her hair shimmered in the dull florescent lights, everybody else looked like heroin addicts in those lights, she looked perfect. She sat next to me and said:

    “Hi, Neil. I’m so happy you decided to sit with us.”

    “Yeah, me too.” I replied.

    “So, tell me more about yourself Neil.”

    “What do you want to know?”

    “Everything.”

    “Everything?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Well I was born on May 4, 1964, and-.” I began to laugh. “I’m sorry, but there’s almost nothing about me that you don’t know. I told you basically everything yesterday.”

    “Oh.”

    “I want to know about you Alison. I want to know everything.”

    “Where should I start?”

    “How about with your last name.”

    “It’s Matthews.”

    “Nice name. Irish?”

    “My father’s family is from England, my mother’s is from Wales.”

    “Huh. My grandfather was from Scotland. And my mother-.” I choked up. “She was from Ireland.” I cleared my throat. She put her arm around me again.

    “You miss her, don’t you?”

    “Yeah. I do. She was a good woman, she was too young to die.”

    “Do you get along with your father?”

    “It was better before my mom died, obviously. Now, we kind of talk, most of the time he stays in his room. How about you? You get along with your parents?”

    “God, no.” she said as she took her arm away, I didn’t want her to. “I hate my father, he’s a f*****g a*****e.”

    “Why?”

    “Because he found out, after he went through all my things, that I’m on the pill.”

    “The pill? Birth control pills?”

    “Yeah. So, I have sex what is the big deal?” The big deal was that she was only 14, the big deal was that she was too nice of a girl to be giving herself to pubescent troglodytes. Thank God that we were in that period of history right before AIDS. I, of course, didn’t make these thoughts known.

    “Nothing I see that’s wrong with it.”

    “That’s exactly what I said to him!” she said as she smiled. “I told him that it’s 1978 not 1958. That he had to catch up with the times, that we are living in a sexual revolution.”

    “And what did he do?”

    “He grounded me for five months.” In my mind I saw nothing wrong with that punishment, keep her indoors so the little b******s can’t take advantage of her beauty. Yet again, I took her side.

    “That’s an outrage!” I said, not believing a word of it.

    “Tell me about it.”

    “What about your mother? You get along with her?:” Her face grew stiff.

    “I used to.” She got a look of pure misery in her eyes.

    “What happened?” I said as sympathetically as I could.

    “I really don’t want to talk about it, okay?” I knew not to press on, but I did.

    “Why? What happened?”

    “I said I don’t want to talk about it Neil.”

    “But-.”

    “God damn it Neil!” she yelled “I said I don’t want to talk about it!” she got up and ran out of the cafeteria.

    “Alison! I’m-.” I got up and I went after her. I found her outside the school sitting at a table in the courtyard. I slowly walked up to her. She had her head in her arms, which were folded on the table. I could hear her sobbing. “Alison?” I said softly. She sniffled as she lifted her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Jesus, I’m sorry Alison. I didn’t mean to-.”

    “It’s alright Neil.” She said quietly.

    “Alison, if I’ve hurt you, I’m sorry.” She smiled at me.

    “I’m not crying because of you, Neil.”

    “Then why are you crying?” I said as I sat next to her.

    “Because of my mother. She’s cheating on my father.” My heart broke for her as I saw the tears roll down her soft porcelain cheeks. “She’s been sleeping with his best friend, Ray Henderson, for the past six months.”

    “How did you find out?”

    “When I was coming home from a date a couple of weeks ago, I saw them in the car. He had his hands-his hands were all over her. Her hands were all over him. It made me want to throw up.”

    “What did you do?”

    “What could I do? I ran into the house.”

    “Does she know that you saw them?”

    “No. And now, every time she leaves the house, I know that she’s going to see him. That she’s going to have sex with him. Him, not my father. Not the man she said she’d love for the rest of her life.”

    “I thought that you hated your father.” She chuckled as she nodded her head.

    “That was just a lot of talk. I don’t hate him, I hate him for grounding me. Typical teenage s**t. But what my mother is doing to him, what she has been doing to him, for months, how can I keep this to myself?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “What do I do Neil?” Never in my life had anyone ever asked me that question, not my father, not my mother, no one. So, I came up with something off the top of my head.

    “What do you think you should do?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “What would be the right thing to do?”

    “To tell him. But if I told him, it would destroy him and end any kind of relationship I could ever have with my mother.” There was obviously no right thing to do at all, she shouldn’t have even been in this position. How could her mother be so god damn selfish, I thought.

    “But if you don’t tell anybody it will eat away at you, for the rest of your life. The fact that you knew that she was doing this, and you never said anything, never did anything to stop it.”

    “So, either way, people I love are going to get hurt?”

    “Pretty much. But your mother doesn’t deserve any sympathy here, none. She is causing all of this. She’s making you feel this way because of her own actions. If you decide to tell your father, don’t feel bad for your mother. Don’t shed a single tear for her Alison, you’re too good to feel sorry for her.” The tears, the sadness, just lifted from her. She leaned over to me as if she was going to kiss me. Instead she wrapped her arms around me and gave me the tightest hug I ever had.

    “Thank you Neil.” She said after releasing me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She trotted off back into the school. I was left alone with the knowledge that I had helped her, that I made a difference in her life. And that I was in love with Alison Matthews.

    The next day I waited for Alison to show up, so I could find out what happened. She didn’t come to school that day, or the next, or the day after that. I began to get worried so I tracked down her friend Julia.

    “Julia?” I said to her as I walked up to where she was sitting in the library.

    “Yes?”

    “I’m Neil, do you remember me?” She had a puzzled look on her face and then it hit her.

    “Oh yeah, the guy that was staring at Alison. How are you?”

    “I’m fine. Actually I’m here about Alison, have you seen her?”

    “No, why?”

   “Because she hasn’t been in school for the past three days, I’m worried about her.”

    “Well, I can give you her address, go over to her house and find out what’s going on.” She wrote the address down on a piece of paper.

    “Thank you.” I began to walk away.

    “Hey Neil. You’re in love with her already aren’t you?” I looked back at her and was shocked that it was so obvious. I nodded my head. “Go see her.” I left the library, and the school. Her street was only a couple of blocks from the school, I jogged most of the way. When I got to her house I noticed two things. First there were no trees on the property. This was in a neighbourhood in which every house had at least three or four trees in the front yard

alone. And the second thing was that there were no cars in the driveway. I went up the walkway and rang the bell. The door opened, it was on a chain, and I could see part of Alison’s face in the opening.

    “Alison?” I said. “Is that you?”

    “What do you want Neil?” she sounded like she was afraid.

    “Are you alright? Why haven’t you been in school the last three days?”

    “I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She began to close the door.

    “Alison? What’s wrong?” She sighed as she stepped back and closed the door, she took the chain off and the door opened, and there she was, one side of her face bruised and battered. “Oh, my God.” I said as I saw the awful sight. “Who did this to you?” she let me in. “Who did this to you?” I repeated as she closed the door. “Alison?”

    “It was my mother.” I felt a sudden chill.

    “What?” I couldn’t believe it, no one could be that evil. No one.

    “I told my father about the affair, with her in the room. He just stood there and looked at me, he believed me though, he did. Then she punched me. He grabbed her and he picked her up and he threw her out of the house. He told her to go live with Ray. He told her that he never wants to see her again.”

    “How’s your face?”

    “It’s just a couple of really bad bruises. They’ll go away in a week or two. I didn’t want anybody to see me like this.” I thought she was the most beautiful thing in the world, bruises or not. I didn’t say that, of course.

    “You scared the hell out of me Alison.”

    “Why?”

    “Because, I was so worried about you. I know we’ve only known each other for a few days, but, I really care about you Alison. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” she hugged me again. Never in my life did I want to kiss someone as bad as I wanted to kiss her then. In the span of one week I had fallen madly in love with her, it would only get better, until it got worse.

    Every single day that I saw her I fell more in love with her. She made me happier than I had ever been, she gave me a reason to live (not that I was a suicide case or anything). We were always together, so that made it increasingly difficult for me to keep my feelings for her secret. Especially when I would see her with guys that treated her like s**t, which happened a lot. The guys she dated were a******s, they didn’t care about her. They made her think that they did, just so she would have sex with them. And when she did, they would dump her and I had to pick up the pieces of her broken heart. I was there every time she broke up with somebody.  That first year alone she must’ve broken up with six or seven guys, one of whom she truly loved. His name was Curtis Franklin. Curtis was a 10^th grader; he had been left back twice, so he had his own car. He was 17 she was 15. They met at a party; they had sex that night in the backseat of his ’68 Chevy.  They were together from early February 1979 to mid May. All I heard those few months was Curtis this and Curtis that. It was like he was the most important thing in her life, which he was. He was the only one of her boyfriends that ever treated her with respect. He was the only one that actually seemed to give a damn about her. At least that’s what Alison and I thought.

    Things began to go downhill around the end of April. Curtis began spending less time with Alison and more time with Julia. Curtis knew Julia before her knew Alison, so we didn’t suspect anything at first. It was when I saw them kissing in the parking lot, that was when I began to suspect. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. A few months prior Alison had been in the same exact situation and she wound up getting hurt more than anyone else. What was I to do? Well, first of all I walked up to the two of them and said:

    “What the hell are you doing?!” They stopped kissing, looked at me, Julia looked terrified, and Curtis looked annoyed.

    “What the hell does it look like we’re doing, a*****e?” he said.

    “It looks to me like you’re cheating on Alison with her best friend.”

    “Really? Well that’s exactly what it is. How observant you are Neil.”

    “How could you do this Julia? Alison is your friend.” She looked down at the ground. “And you, Alison loves you more than anything in the world. How can you do this to her?”

    “F**k you, Neil. Don’t f*****g talk to me about Alison. You don’t know a f*****g thing about Alison.”

    “Oh, I don’t?”

    “No, you think you do. But you don’t.”

    “Well, I know this, when I tell her it’ll break her heart again. You really are a son of a b***h, you know that Curtis?” I walked away from them, Julia came running up behind me.

    “Neil, you can’t tell Alison.”

    “Why not Julia? You don’t seem to give a s**t about her feelings.”

    “That’s not true. Alison is my best friend, I don’t want to hurt her.”

    “But you are hurting her, can’t you see that?”

    “I see that, Neil, but you’re gonna hurt her more than I ever could.”

    “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

    “Because you love her. If you tell her about Curtis and me, then you’re just looking out for yourself.”

    “No I won’t.”

    “Yes, you will Neil. If you tell her then you’re no better to her than Curtis or me.”

    “That’s where you’re wrong Julia. I’m better to her than anybody. Especially you.” I walked away from her and I didn’t think about what she said to me at first, but later on in the day I couldn’t think about anything else. Was she right? Would I actually tell Alison, just to see if she would fall in love with me? Could I be that evil? I convinced myself that telling Alison was the only thing to do, but again I was drawn back to what happened with Alison and her parents. Sometimes honesty is not the best policy. But I couldn’t let that b*****d get away with hurting her the way he was. She had to know, I had to tell her. It was the only thing to do, right or wrong.

    The next day I walked into the cafeteria very slowly, I had no idea how to tell her. I knew that I was about to break her heart, but was it really me that was breaking her heart? Christ, how was I going to do this? I walked up next to her, she was smiling, she looked happy, how could I tell her this? I sat down, she may have said hello to me, if she did I couldn’t hear her. All the sounds had faded into oblivion, all I could hear was my heart beating faster and faster. I turned my head and I looked at her, she was so happy. Gradually I began to hear what she was saying, it was all about Curtis, about all the plans they had for the summer that was coming in a few weeks. I could feel my lips opening up like I was about to say something, but no words came out. I couldn’t speak. Just then I saw, all the way across the cafeteria, Curtis and Julia kissing. The image burned into my mind, it enraged me, it gave me the strength to do what I had to do.

    “Alison?” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

    “Okay.”

    “Alone. In private.” We got up and went out into the courtyard, the same courtyard we were in a few months before.

    “What’s wrong?” she said as she sat at the very same table.

    “God, I don’t even know where to begin.”

    “Neil, you’re worrying me. What’s going on?”

    “Alright, Alison I have something to tell you, you’re not going to like it but you have to hear it.”

    “Neil, tell me.”

    “I don’t know how to tell you.” She stood and put her hand on my arm.

    “Neil, you can tell me anything.” She looked me in the eyes and gasped. “Oh God. You’re moving aren’t you? Oh no, please tell me that that’s not it, please Neil.”

    “I’m not moving Alison.” She sighed.

    “Thank God. I don’t know what I’d do without you here Neil.” Oh, why did she have to say that?

    “Alison, it’s about Curtis.” I forged on.

    “What about him?” I looked into those beautiful eyes, knowing that they would soon be flowing forth with tears of ultimate sadness and pain. God, I didn’t want to do this. Goddamn Curtis and Julia I thought. Those selfish sons of b*****s, how could they be this way? But I knew, I knew that she had to know.

    “Curtis has been cheating on you…with Julia.” Her expression quickly changed from happy to angry.

    “What?!”

    “I’m sorry.”

    “I can’t believe this.”

    “Alison I-.”

    “How could you make something up like that?” I was taken aback.

    “What?”

    “I never thought that you, of all the people I know, that you would do something like this to me!”

    “Alison, it’s the truth. I saw them myself.”

    “Why are you doing this Neil? Curtis loves me; Julia is my friend, they would never do that to me!”

    “Alison, they are. They have been for awhile now.”

    “Stop it! Stop it Neil! I can’t even look at you!” she ran back inside the cafeteria. I just stood there and I watched as she was stopped in her tracks by the awful sight of the man she loved kissing her best friend. I slowly walked back into the cafeteria and I stood behind Alison as she watched them. After a few seconds Julia noticed Alison standing there, she looked over.

    “Alison?” Curtis looked at her, as if to say ‘yeah, so what?’ Alison turned to me, I tried to say something to her but she ran out. I looked at the two a******s and said to them:

    “You f*****g b******s.” I began to walk away from them when Julia said:

    “I hope you’re happy now Neil.” I turned and looked back at them, and I walked away.

    I looked everywhere for Alison that day, I couldn’t find her. I went walking that night; I thought it might soothe my soul. It didn’t. All I could think about was the look on her face when she saw them. How much pain she was in at that moment, and how there wasn’t a thing I could do for her. I thought about why I told her. Did I really tell her because she needed to know, or did I tell her because I thought that she would fall in love with me?  I thought about that a lot, so much that I convinced myself that I was more at fault for Alison’s pain than Curtis and Julia. I made myself think that I let my feelings for Alison get in the way of my better judgment. A notion that I quickly threw aside as a bunch of s**t. I walked throughout the better part of Fresno that night; I was hoping that I would find Alison. I came up to an overpass; I could see someone standing on the wall. I couldn’t get a good look at their face; I could tell that is was a woman or a teenage girl.

    “Hey, don’t jump! Don’t jump.” The person turned to say something, as her face came into the light I could see that it was “Oh my God, Alison. Oh Christ Alison don’t jump!” She looked at me and said:

    “Go home Neil, I don’t want you to see me do this.”

    “I’m not going home because you’re not going to do anything.” I slowly began to make my way over to her.

    “No! Don’t come any closer Neil! I’ll jump! I swear to God I’ll jump!”

    “Okay, okay. I won’t come any closer, and you’re not going to jump Alison.”

    “Yes I am Neil.”  I had to think of something to say to her that would bring her off of the wall.

    “Alison, please don’t jump.” She looked right at me.

    “Give me one reason not to.” I knew what I had to do; I knew what I had to tell her.

    “Because I can’t live without you Alison.”  She looked at me, she was trembling. “I need you Alison, you make everyday worth all the other s**t I have to put up with. When I see you everything has meaning, everything. I-I-I-I-I love you Alison. I have loved you since the day I met you, if you jump, if you do this, then you’ll end my life too. Because I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.” She was crying as I told her these things, not because she was sad but because someone had finally, truly loved her. Loved her without question, without doubt. Without the expectation of anything in return, just loving her for who she was. Not for what she would do, not for anything except for the kind of person she was. I knew that the chances of her saying it back were slim to none, but I knew it was the only thing that would save her life. That’s why I did it, and that’s why I told her about Curtis and Julia. Not to satisfy my own needs, but to see that she wouldn’t get hurt. So that she could be happy, so that she could live. And when she came down from that wall, and when I held her in my arms, the world felt right again. Now that she knew how special she was to me, how important she was, nothing would ever be the same. But that wasn’t important, all that mattered was that I was holding her in my arms, that she was still alive, not dead on the road below. I held her in my arms that night and I made a promise to myself that I would never let go.