Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

 

 

 

 

    As we ate our breakfast I tried to remember what happened the night before. I had never gotten so drunk before, to the point where I couldn’t remember what I did.

    “Hey, Alison?” I said.

    “Yeah?”

    “Are you sure you don’t remember a thing about last night?”

    “No, I don’t remember a thing. Why?”

    “I’ve been sitting here, eating my pancakes, trying to remember everything or anything that happened last night.”

    “Well if you try to remember, you never will. The best way to remember something is to not think about it.”

    “Really?”

    “Yeah. By thinking about what you want to remember you cloud your mind, making it harder to find the memory.”

    “I just wish that I could remember.”

    “Don’t worry about it Neil, I’m sure it will come to you.”

    “To both of us you mean?”

    “Yeah.”

    From 1986 to 1994 Alison and I were what we were at the beginning, friends. In that eight-year period we both had our share of new people in our lives, and our share of heartbreaks (although she had many more than I did). We were both happy, she was a little happier than I was, but still. By 1992 Alison was in a serious relationship with a man by the name of Charles Young. He was a banker, he also looked like a 1950’s movie star, so he was perfect. He was more than good-looking though, he was smart, he was funny, he treated Alison the way she deserved to be treated. He was a good man, maybe even a better man than me. When I saw how happy she was with him, it hurt. It hurt because I remember how happy she was with me, and it seemed that she was happier with him than she ever was with me. I never wanted to admit it to myself but I was still madly and horribly in love with her. And then on October 2, 1993 Alison showed up at my San Francisco apartment with a surprise.

    “What’s the big surprise Alison? You sounded so excited on the phone.”

    “I am.” She said smiling from ear to ear.

    “Well, what’s going on?”

    “Charles asked me to marry him.” I felt my knees get weak.

    “Yeah?” I said trying to hide my true feelings.

    “I said yes.” She said smiling. I stood there for a minute trying to think of what to say.

    “Well, that’s-that’s just-that’s some of the best news I’ve heard all day! Come here and give me a hug!” I wrapped my arms around her, hoping that she wouldn’t see thru my very obvious lie.

    “Oh, thank God. I thought that you’d flip out.”

    “Why would I flip out? This is good news Alison.”

    “I know, I just figured because of…”

    “Alison, that is the past. What did you think that I was still in love with you? That’s a laugh.”

    “Yeah, I guess it is.”

    “So, have you set the date yet?”

    “No, but we’re looking at the spring. Maybe April.”

    “Well, I’ll be there. Front and center.”

    “That’s good to hear. I just wanted to let you know. I really have to run, I’ll see you soon okay?”

    “Yeah.” She kissed me on the cheek and left. I closed the door and I went over and sat on my couch. The first tear managed to sneak its way out of my eye, I tired to stop the second and the third, but after the fourth I just let them flow on out. I wept with no one there to hold me, no one to make it better. No one to help me.

    As the next few months went by I tried everything I could to get over Alison. I tried dating; I tried locking myself away from the world. But nothing worked; I could not get over her. I could not get her face out of my mind. I couldn’t get over anything about her, everything that made me love her, couldn’t get over her. In early March 1994 I received the wedding invitation. The wedding was going to be held in a Catholic church in Merced, Charles’ hometown. It was going to be held on April 27, the RSVP date was March 29. By March 29, I had not yet replied. On the 30^th Alison came to see me. I opened the door and she said.

    “So, you’re not dead.” She walked inside.

    “Uh, hi.”

    “Why haven’t you sent your reply to the invitation Neil?”

    “I’ve been busy.”

    “Busy doing what?”

    “Work.” I was working as a production assistant at one of the San Francisco television stations.

    “You’ve been so busy that you couldn’t drop an envelope in a mailbox?”

    “I guess so.”

    “Do you not want to come to the wedding Neil?” No, I thought, I don’t Alison.

    “Of course I do.”

    “Then what’s the problem?”

    “I told you, I’ve been busy.”

    “Neil? Are you still in love with me?” I hoped that she would ask me that question, so that I could fall to my knees and proclaim it to her. To ask her to marry me, and not Charles. But I gave the correct answer.

    “No. I’m not.” It was the worst lie I have ever told, what made it even worse is that she believed me.

    “Then, are you or are you not coming to the wedding?” I had to tell her what she wanted to hear.

    “I’ll be there.”

    “Promise me Neil.” She knew that I could never break a promise to her.

    “I promise. I will be there.”

    I dreaded the arrival of her wedding day; I also dreaded what I planned on doing.

    April 27, 1994 started out as a beautiful day. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky. The wedding wasn’t until five o’clock so I had time to think about what I was going to do, the consequences of it all. I was going to go to the church early, look for Alison and convince her to leave Charles for me. I got the idea after I watched ‘The Graduate’, it seemed to work for Dustin Hoffman, so why not me? There was a fear inside of me that I had never felt before, the fear that if this didn’t work then it would mean the end of my life. How could I possibly go on living after that? The fear grew as I got into my car and made my to Merced. I parked in a garage up the street from the church, I was an hour early. I walked thru the doors and I made my way up to the alter.

    “God, I know we’ve had our problems, quite frankly I don’t know why Alison is getting married in a church. After her father died, you were kind of dead to her. It’s probably for Charles. God, let what I am about to do work. I couldn’t live seeing her married to another man. Don’t let me loose her God.” I walked thru the church until I found a priest. “Uh, excuse me father, but has the bride in the Young-Matthews wedding arrived yet?”

    “Uh, yes I believe she’s in the rectory.”

    “Thank you father.” I walked over to the rectory and I found the room she was in. The door was cracked slightly open, I could see her, she was alone. She had just put her dress on. I knocked.

    “If that’s anyone besides Charles come on in.” I opened the door and she smiled when she saw me. “Thank you for coming Neil.” She said as she hugged me. Why did she always have to do that?

    “You look-you look amazing. I think that you are the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.” She smiled.

    “Why are you here so early? The wedding’s not for an hour yet.”

    “I know, I just wanted to see you.”

    “Aww, you’re so sweet.” She hugged me again. Every time she put her body against mine, it made me more determined.

    “Alison, there is something really important I need to ask you.” This was it.

    “What?”

    “I don’t know if I can do this.”

    “Neil, you can ask me anything.”

    “Not this.”

    “Neil, what is it?”

    “Don’t marry Charles.”

    “What?”

    “Marry me. I want you to marry me.”  She stood there gasping for air.

    “Are you kidding me?”

    “No, Alison. I love you, I’ve never stopped loving you. I want us to spend the rest of our lives together.” She stared at me.

    “You want me to leave the man I love at the alter? So I can marry you?”

    “Yes.”

    “That’s not going to happen Neil.”

    “Why not?”

    “Because I love Charles, not you. I haven’t felt that way for you in over eight years Neil.”

    “But, we belong together Alison.”

    “No Neil, I belong with Charles. At least with him I don’t have to play these kinds of games.”

    “Games? You think I’m playing a game here? You think my love for you is a game?”

    “No. But Neil, we have not been together for a long time. We are never going to be together again. Accept that.”

    “No, I won’t accept that Alison. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be!”

    “Says who? You? All because you have this fantasy in your head of us being together until we’re old and gray? It’s not real Neil. It’s a dream.”

    “It’s not a dream Alison. It’s how our lives should be.”

    “Goddamn it Neil, you’re thirty not thirteen! Stop holding onto things that are long gone.”

    “No, because it’s not gone. I know, I know that you still love me.”

    “You do?”

    “I do. You just won’t admit it, just like when we were in junior high.”

    “This isn’t junior high Neil! We are adults now!”

    “I know that Alison, it’s just that, I don’t want to spend my life with anyone besides you.”

    “Well, you’re going to have to Neil. Because I am marrying Charles.”

    “Alison, please. Don’t do this to me.”

    “Do what to you?”

    “If you marry Charles then, I don’t know how I’ll be able to go on living.” It was cheap of me to do, but I was desperate. She sighed disgustedly.

    “You sick son of a b***h. Don’t you threaten me with that. You know what, get the hell out of here.”

    “Alison-.”

    “Get out Neil! I don’t ever want to see you again.” I stood there, broken and defeated, as she sat in her chair continuing to prepare for the wedding. She was ignoring my presence. I wanted to try once more to convince her to leave Charles for me, I wanted to go onto the breech once more. But I just turned around and I left. I walked out of the church and I reached into my pocket. I pulled out a ring I had planned to put on her finger when she said yes. It was useless now, so I just dropped it on the ground. I went back to my car and I sat there. I sat there and I watched the precession go by. All the limos, all the guests filing into the church. I watched Charles and his best man talking outside, they all looked so happy. None of them knew what I had tried to do. How I almost ruined it all for everyone. I sat there in my car during the service, I waited for them to come out. And when they did Alison had the largest smile on her face that I had ever seen. They got into their limo and they sped off, she was gone.

    “It’s over.” I said under my breath as I turned the key in the ignition. I went home.

    I remember very little of the next few months. I began to drink far more than my father ever did. For the rest of 1994 and a large portion of 1995 I was regularly intoxicated. I didn’t want to live anymore. The woman I loved now hated me, and (at the time) I didn’t know if my father was a murderer or not. And then in May of 1996 I received a letter telling me to go to the Union National Bank in Fresno and ask for safe deposit box number 77253. And when I found what I found and when I confronted my father with it, everything began to change. I now knew that my father was a murderer, but the woman I loved still hated me.

    By November of 1998 my father was near death. He wrote me a letter begging me to come see him. I didn’t want to go, but seeing him die, it was the kind of closure I wanted and needed. And so, yet again, I made my way to that house. And yet again I marveled at how everything was the same, except for my father. He was now confined to bed, he was frail and weak. He was a shadow of the man who I knew when I was young. He no longer had the air of supremacy to him, he didn’t look like the man who never cried for my mother. He looked like a man. A weak, pathetic, dying man. He saw me standing at his door and he motioned for me to come in. I sat next to him.

    “Hello, dad.” I said. He nodded his head. “How are you doing?”

    “The doctor says I could go any time.” He said raspy and weakly.

    “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick dad?”

    “What would you have done? You had just found out the truth about me.”

    “I still could’ve gotten you help.”

    “No, it’s better that I die. Why should I be allowed to live, while a good person dies?” it was a fair question. Here was a man who had murdered two people in his life (one of whom he wouldn’t admit to killing), why should this miserable creature live?

    “Don’t talk like that dad.” I tried to ease his pain, it wasn’t much of an effort.

    “So, how is your life Neil?”

    “Altogether or parts of it?”

    “Altogether.”

    “Miserable.”

    “Why so bad?”

    “Because the last four years of my life are four years that nobody should have to live.”

    “Why?”

    “Alison got married four years ago. I tried to stop the wedding, I asked her to marry me. But she said she never wanted to see me again. Then I started drinking a lot-.” And that’s when it hit me. I had become my father. I had loved and lost and tried to steal that love back. And I had drank my sorrows away. I had become the thing that I hated the most, the thing that destroyed the life of my brother. The thing that took my mother’s life. I had become him.

    “And?”

    “Huh?”

    “You were saying that you started drinking a lot, and then you just went off someplace.”

    “Oh, I started drinking a lot and, uh, it’s been a real hard time for me.”

    “I’m sorry to hear that son.”

    “I’ll bet.”

    “What did you say?’

    “Nothing.”

    “So, Neil, I suppose you want to know why I wanted you here?”

    “The thought had entered my mind.”

    “I want you to end my life.” I didn’t quite know how to respond to that.

    “Excuse me?”

    “I want you to take me off of these goddamn machines.” It was a tempting offer.

    “Dad-.”

    “Neil, please. It’s what I want. I want to die.”

    “Dad, what you’re asking me to do, is-.”

    “I know you want to do it. Hell, if my father asked me to end his life I would’ve jumped at the chance. If you take me off of these machines and inject what’s in that syringe into me then I’ll die.”

    “Dad, it’s illegal. They consider it murder.”

    “I know that, but what about letting people suffer? Why is that allowed?”

    “Dad, I think that you-.”

    “You think that I deserve to suffer, I know. And I agree with you. But when you release me from this world and into the next, I will endure more suffering than you can ever imagine.”

    “Even if that were true, it’s still a crime. You are asking me to commit a crime.”

    “No, I am asking you to perform an act of mercy. Even though I don’t deserve any.” I thought long and hard about this decision. Would it be murder? Would he go on to suffer even worse than this? “Neil, please.” After a long pause I said.

    “When do you want to do it?”

    “Now. And don’t worry about the police, or anything like that, the way we’re doing this it’ll be ruled a suicide.” On the table next to his bed was a pair of latex gloves. “Put those on.” I pulled them on. “Now disconnect the wires.” I took all the wires and tubes out of his body. He struggled to breathe when I pulled the tubes out of his nose. “Now-now in-inject me.” I picked up the syringe and I stuck the needle into his arm and I injected him. It took him a few minutes to die. Right before he did he looked right at me and he said: “Thank you Neil. I love you.” And then he was gone. I stood over the body of my father and all the hate I had for him, all the hate went away.

    “Goodbye dad.”

    I buried him a few days later. I sold the house not long after that. I sold it to a married couple with two young children. I went back to San Francisco to continue my life without Alison. Then on the weekend of May 15 1999 I returned to Fresno for my high school’s 17^th class reunion, something that didn’t make much sense to me but what the hell it was free booze. I remember checking into the motel on Friday morning, I remember going to the reunion for a little bit, but after that nothing.

    “So, who’s going to pay?” Alison said after finishing her third glass of grapefruit juice.

    “I guess, I will.” I pulled out my wallet and put down twenty-five dollars. “You think that’s enough?” She looked at the pile of money.

    “Put down another two.” I did. We got up and we walked back to the motel. I sat on the bed still trying to figure out what happened. “Neil, what did I tell you before? Don’t think about it, that’s the only way it’ll come back to you.”

    “Yeah I know.” Then I got an idea. “Stay here I’ll be right back.” I went to the manager downstairs.

    “Good morning.” He said in his Indian accent.

    “Yeah hi. Let me ask you a question.”

    “Okay?”

    “Do you remember me coming back here last night?”

    “Yes. You were with the girl you went to the pancake place with.”

    “You remember seeing us?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Did we seem to be really drunk?”

    “Oh, yeah. She had to carry you. I’ve never seen a woman so strong.”

    “What did you just say?”

    “I said I’ve never seen a woman-.”

    “Before that.”

    “Oh, I said she had to carry you.”

    “I thought you said we were both really drunk”

    “Well, it looked like you were passed out.”

    “So, she wasn’t drunk?”

    “Now that you mention it, no. She didn’t look it.” I went back up to the room.

    “So, where did you go?” I grabbed her and I pushed her up against the wall. “Neil, you’re hurting me.”

    “What did you do to me?!”

    “What are you talking about?”

    “Don’t play that game with me Alison! I went to see the manager, he remembers seeing us last night. He said that you weren’t drunk at all! That you were carrying me up the stairs! What did you do to me?!”

    “Neil, you’re hurting me!”

    “Tell me what you did to me!”

    “I didn’t do anything to you!”
    “Tell me the truth!”

    “That is the truth! Let go of me and I’ll tell you what happened.” I let go and she sat on the bed. “Where do you want me to start?”

    “How about the beginning?”

    “Alright. Charles and I split up and I went to see you at your building. Your neighbor told me that you were at your reunion.”

    “Why did you want to see me?”

    “Because I realized that you were the one I wanted to be with.

    “Just like that?”

    “I had come to realize it over the last few months. Charles-Charles was amazing. But he wasn’t you Neil. He didn’t make me feel the way you did. He never would. So I went to your apartment but you weren’t there. Your neighbor told me about the reunion. But when I got there you weren’t there. Everyone told me that you came and left within ten minutes, they said you went to this bar on the highway…”

    “What are you doing here?” I said to her after she came back into my life.

    “I’m here to see you.”

    “Oh, you are? Huh? I thought that you never wanted to see me again.”

    “That was before-.”

    “Before what?” I asked as I sipped another drink.

    “Before I realized that I want to be with you.”

    “Don’t tell me that, not now.”

    “Why not?”

    “Because it’s too late. You’re married.”

    “Not anymore. Charles and I split up two weeks ago.”

    “So?”

    “So, this means that we can have a second chance.”

    “A second chance?”

    “Yes. Neil, there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about what you said to me in the church. After being married to Charles for five years I began to wonder if it was true. If you and I did belong together. And I think that we do.”

    “You do?”

    “Yes, Neil. So what do you say we get out of here okay?”

    “Where do you want to go?”

    “How about back to your motel?”

    “Alright.” The night began to come back to me.

    “So, after we left the bar, I drove you back to the motel. I had to help you up the stairs, I unlocked the door and you laid on the bed.”

    “So, what do you want to do now?” I said after lying down.

    “Whatever you want me to do.” I could remember now. I remembered being in the bar, but nothing after that. Nothing after that. Nothing.

    “After I said that I walked over to you and I straddled you. I kissed your lips, I had forgotten how they felt. Then you fell asleep. So, I took your clothes off and I climbed into bed with you. That’s what happened.” I was dumbfounded.

    “This makes no sense.”

    “I know.”

    “So, now you want to be with me?”

    “Yes Neil.”

    “I’ve waited thirteen years for you to say those words.” She sighed and she tried to kiss me. “But now, I’ve realized something.”

    “What?”

    “Obsession can be a very powerful thing. It can control you, it can make you think that everything you are doing is the right thing to do.”

    “I don’t understand.”

    “When I came to that church five years ago, I thought it was the right thing to do. I made myself think that. I was so obsessed with the idea of being with you again, with the idea of you, that I never questioned my actions. Or my motives. I didn’t go to that church because I was still in love with you it was because I was obsessed with you.”

    “What are you saying Neil?”

    “I’m saying that for us to get back together would be a terrible mistake. It would hurt us more than help us. I mean admit Alison, do you actually love me?” She looked long and hard at me, her eyes filling with tears. She didn’t have to answer; I knew that she loved me. I just didn’t love her anymore. Too much time had passed; too many open wounds had never healed. If I went back to her then I would become my father. He was obsessed with my mother and it destroyed the lives of everyone involved. I didn’t want to happen to me or to Alison. I did love her, just not the way I did.

    “So, what do we do now?” she said as her voice cracked.

    “Now, we go downstairs, we get into the car and we get the hell out of here.”

    “And then what?”

    “Then we go on with our lives.”

    “Will we still be friends?”

    “Of course.” We went down the stairs to my car.

    “Oh, I forgot my jacket.” Alison said.

    “I’ll go get it.” I went back up to the room; her jacket was draped over a chair in the corner. I picked it up and something fell out. I leaned over to pick it up. It was a bottle. A bottle of pills, a bottle of sedatives. The prescription was for twenty-five pills, I opened the bottle and I poured them out on the nightstand. “Twenty-four.” I said after counting them. It was then that I realized what had happened to me, what Alison had done to me. I put the pills back in the bottle and I put them back in her jacket pocket. Before I left the room for good I took one last look back. I remembered how things were back in the days when Alison and I were younger, when all we had was each other. And how we took care of each other, how we never hurt one another. When all we had was love. I went back down the stairs to the car. She was leaning up against it, looking just as beautiful as the day I met her over twenty years before. But she wasn’t that girl anymore, she was gone forever. “Here’s your jacket.” I said as I handed it to her. I opened the car door for her and she got in. I reached in my pocket and I pulled out a pack of cigarettes. I lit one up and I took a long drag. It was a beautiful crystal clear day, not a single cloud in the sky. I got in the car and Alison said to me

    “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t Neil?” I looked at her then took another drag of my cigarette.

    “Yes. It’s a beautiful day.” I started the car and we drove off.

    After that day, I never saw Alison again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                             end