Life From Bitterness

Life From Bitterness

By

Jennifer Smith-Jones

Sitting at the kitchen table, doors and windows open to let in the cool Autumn air of sunset. Outside, in the distance, the voices of children playing and laughing were heard. Dusk had just descended, and fireflies were swarming in the darkness.

The mood around the table was heavy with grief and despair. Colleen knew it was all her fault. She looked around the table at her guests. Her parents, Frank and Helen; and Jason's parents, Al and Allison.

"It's my last night in this house," Colleen said." The house Jason built for me, for us."

Even now, six years after she had destroyed their world, a year after Jason's suicide, the tears were not far away. For all of them.

The tears would always be close by, for the rest of their lives. That was just how it was going to be. All were resigned to it.

Colleen lifted her wineglass and said, "To Jason."

The others raised their glasses and echoed the toast, "To Jason." They drank to the toast.

Jason's father, Al, said, "I still can't believe you are just giving the house away, like this." Colleen reached over and put her hand on his.

"Al, I don't deserve this house, not after what I did. I don't deserve to keep any value from it for myself. I forfeited any right to the house, to any value or happiness from it. I wanted a family to have it, who needed it. The family I found couldn't afford it. So I gave it to them. That way, something Jason left in this world will mean something to someone who deserves it." She lifted her glass again and said, "To the Martin family. This house was built with love by a good man. May this home bring them joy." As before, they shared in the toast.

Silence descended on the group again; each filled with their own thoughts and regrets. Colleen said, "I fucked up. Oh, God, I fucked up so bad!" The tears came on full, now, her face in her hands.

Al said, "We all fucked up, honey. Me, maybe worst of all. I wish I could take back what I said to him. I was just so angry. Eight horrible words. I'd spend eternity in Hell with a smile if I could just take back saying... what I said. Maybe he would still be here today. I lost my temper, and my son paid for it. I'm going to have those hateful words carved on my tombstone, so everyone knows how badly I failed my son, even long after I'm gone. I can't forgive myself, and I won't ask God for mercy, which I imagine He wouldn't be inclined to give, for once."

Frank said, "Al, no. You raised that boy as if he was your own son. You loved him, taught him, and never once did he know. You were his father."

"A father who failed his son," Al said.

"It wasn't all on you, Al. Jason had a part in this, too." Then he turned to Colleen and said, "But you must go on, now, Colleen. You can't stop; you can't give up. It's a harsh lesson. But Jason has shown us that. No matter what, you, we, must go on."

"Why did you do it, Colleen?" Helen, her mother, asked.

"Helen," her father said.

"No. She's leaving here, Frank. And moving so far away! And it'll be so much more difficult to stay in touch. I want to know, Colleen. I've never asked you, but I am now. Why did you do it?"

Outside, in the gathering gloom of night, the laughter of the children chasing the fireflies continued.

"Nine months before I started cheating, I had a miscarriage."

"What? Collen, you were forty-nine!"

"I know! I figured I had gone through menopause, there were all the usual signs a year or so before. Moodiness, hot flashes, I had even stopped having regular periods. So I got off the pill, thinking it wasn't necessary anymore. And while I had all the signs of menopause, I had no signs I was pregnant, no morning sickness, nothing. Then that one morning, those awful cramps, and I found out I was three months pregnant. Or I had been. Jason was in Michigan, on his annual Deer Hunting trip, and I never told him."

"Why?" her mother demanded. "Why didn't you tell all of us?"

"There was no point in ruining his trip over something that we couldn't do anything about. I'd just tell him later. But later never came, and the longer it went, the more impossible it became to tell him. It would have broken his heart. It would have broken all of our hearts. We had tried so long, and never once conceived. The doctors said our body chemistries weren't compatible. I only ever got on the pill after we had been trying for 15 years, figuring that having children just wasn't going to happen for us. I only started taking it for some medical issues, and to keep me from being impregnated if I were ever raped. I mean, if I were in menopause, then... why worry about pregnancy?

"Only nature had a little surprise for us. It happens, every now and then, that a post-menopausal woman will conceive. I was devastated. We had maybe one chance to have a child, and when it did happen, I miscarried. I didn't want to tell anyone because I felt utterly useless. I felt like the miscarriage was my fault, somehow. And I couldn't tell Jason because I knew it would tear him apart. All of us. To have come so close, not even knowing it? Then, only knowing about it after it was taken from us? I couldn't figure out why it had all happened like that, other than it was, somehow, all my fault. That I deserved this pain, and the best thing to do was not spread it any further. So I kept it to myself."

Helen said, quietly, "There's an old saying, Colleen."

"Mom, I know. Please don't- "

But Helen would not be deterred. "Shared pain is pain divided. Shared joy is joy multiplied."

"And you never miscarried, did you, Mom? I remembered you teaching me that. And I remember how useless all the platitudes are when you are looking in a toilet bowl at what would have been your child!"

"Hellen, that's enough," Frank said.

"Ok," her mother said. "But why the cheating, then?"

"I hated myself for losing the baby. I was convinced it was my fault. I wanted to be hurt because I failed to keep my baby, I had failed to give my husband a child all those years, and now this? I wanted to punish myself in the worst possible way, and I found out how to accomplish that. I found a web site.

"It was called, "Date a Rapist."

Everyone at the table gasped in horror.

"It's a web site for cheaters who want to have a rape fantasy," Collen continued. "You fill out all this info saying what you will and won't do, and they match it up with guys who agree to those conditions and arrange a meeting. I signed up for everything. Whipping, beatings, caning, multiple assailants, choking, degradation, all of it. Nothing was off limits. I asked for, and got, the most savage treatment over a period of months. Every one of them was horrible. Horrible!"

"My God, Colleen!" Al said. "Why?"

"I wanted to be abused in the worst possible ways for my failure as a woman. And... afterwards, I felt a little better about myself. Because I had suffered, which is all that I thought I was good for, all that I deserved. Or maybe I thought if I suffered enough, it would make things better? Like, I could atone for whatever sin I had committed to cause me to lose my baby and fail my husband. I can't really explain what was going on in my mind at that point. I was only happy when I was being hurt in the worst ways. Not that that excuses anything.

"Anyway. That relief would last about a week; about the time the bruises and marks had healed from the previous session. Then the need to be punished would return, and I had to have it all over again. After the worst session up to that point, I could barely walk for three days, afterwards. Under my robe, my body was a horror show, covered in bruises, bite marks, and burns. I told Jason I just had the flu. I knew I had to do something; I couldn't go on like this. So I started seeing a therapist. That was a disaster. It only made things worse!"

"How?" her mother asked.

"After I had told him everything, he used the information to blackmail me, saying he would tell Jason everything. He made me continue the rape hookups, and added a lot more to them, things even the website said would not be allowed. Not just submitting to being assaulted, but also forcing me to willingly participate in assaulting and degrading other women and men they would bring in. Or they'd tell Jason everything. And I did it. I did horrible things to other women and men. After everything up to that point, there was no way I felt I could ever tell Jason about this! It seemed as if I could only go deeper and deeper into this Hell I had created by my own actions. And I wanted to because I thought I deserved it. Each step I took from the moment I decided not to tell Jason about the miscarriage only pulled me further down. I was lost. And I deserved to be so lost.

"I could only give Jason a pretend version of myself, the person I was before the miscarriage. I prayed and prayed and prayed for answers to all of this. But every answer for a way out demanded I tell Jason everything. If I couldn't tell him about a miscarriage, how could I possibly tell him about everything after that? So I said nothing, and kept up the appearance of a loving, but distant wife.

"Then one night Jason and I were out for dinner. The brother of the therapist came up to our table and started harassing me. He thought Jason was one of the members of the site, I had never shown them his picture or shared any information about him, so the asshole didn't know. He started spouting off all kinds of horrible things they would do to me.

"Jason knocked him out cold with one blow."

"Bricklayers are strong men," her father said. He and Al nodded to each other.

"Well, the asshole had a concussion, his jaw broken in three places, and part of the sinus cavity on that side of his face had been crushed. He had a minor fracture on the back of his skull where his head hit the floor. He was taken to the hospital, and Jason was taken to jail until everything got figured out by the authorities. They concluded the guy was some random asshole who picked the wrong couple to harass, and that was that. When he was released, every officer in the station came to shake his hand.

"I called my therapist the next day and said I was done, and if he told Jason anything, he should think about what Jason did to his brother with just one punch. That was enough to scare them off. They left me alone after that. Also, I called the state. They have an anonymous tip line, and I told them everything. He was sent to prison. I wish I had known about that earlier. Hell, there's so much, now, I wish I had done differently.

"But, "here we are," as my current therapist said.

"In all that time, all those months, I had pushed Jason away. I stopped having sex with him. How could I? He didn't deserve damaged goods. And I usually had the marks on my body to prove I was damaged. I never let him see me naked, anymore. Even if I weren't covered in telltale bruises and other marks, he didn't deserve to have to make love to the broken piece of wreckage that I had become. The physical and emotional refusal I gave him? It crushed Jason. But I played it off as the symptoms of menopause. And he was so patient! Oh, God! I fucked it all up so bad!" Colleen put her face in her hands and sobbed for five minutes.

The children's laughter outside began to slowly reduce in volume as it got darker, their parents calling them home for the night. But some were still out there, carrying on with the endless mad energy of children, carelessly chasing the fireflies as if nothing was more important in their world.

Colleen continued. "When I was free of those bastards, after I had healed fully, we started having sex again. I didn't deserve it, but Jason needed it. I had not started on the pill again, because I figured the first time had to be a one-in-a-million thing.

"A few months went by, and I figured that episode I was in, whatever it was, had passed. But, no. It started coming back, that unrelenting need to suffer for everything, now, that I had done. I tried to ignore it, but it built and built until I was picking fights with Jason over the stupidest things. A dirty glass in the sink. Forgetting to take the trash out. Just stupid, pointless bullshit.

"Yet, somehow, we started having sex again. If that was the only thing I had to offer, then so be it. And I went after him to make up for lost time. But I couldn't enjoy it. I didn't deserve to. I did it only for him. I faked my enjoyment time, after time, after time. If that was what I had to do to give my husband the only thing I thought I had left to give, then so be it.

"When we started making love again, I got pregnant again! And again, I didn't know it. There were no signs, no morning sickness, and since I had stopped having periods, the fact I wasn't having a period was lost on me. And the need for punishment had come back, with a vengeance. I got back on that damned web site and signed up for more. Apparently, I was very popular; most women had some limits in what they would let be done to them, but not me. The three assholes he caught me with demanded we have the session in our house, in our bed; it was part of their degradation of me, taking me in my own home. The scenario was I would have a flat tire, and they would come along and help with the tire change, then abduct me, bring me back home, and rape me. In reality? I picked them up at the train station that morning."

"The morning Jason got rained out?" Helen, her mother asked.

"Yes. I knew about rainouts, of course. But on this side of town there wasn't a cloud in the sky. But there was at his jobsite. And the rest is the horror show I have made of everything. I just want to die. I want to go to Hell, that's all I deserve."

"But you know you can't," Allison, Jason's mother, spoke for the first time.

"No," Colleen said. "I can't. I deserve to die. It's all I deserve, it's more than I deserve, but I can't."

"Jason caught us, and left," Colleen said. "And you know the rest. He would never let me try to explain, and I figured I didn't deserve his forgiveness anyway. I thought he was right to leave. I thought he would be better off without me. I felt I deserved to have him leave me, one more punishment. But if it made him happier, then so be it.

Then he disappeared on us that Thanksgiving morning."

Al said, "Again, that's my failure. We never should have tried to ambush him like that. That Thanksgiving was our last chance, and we, no, I, blew it. Jason never let himself be pushed into anything. I didn't even have to teach him that; it was his nature."

Colleen continued. "And he never even filed for divorce, didn't take anything with him but his clothes, tools, and truck. He changed his phone, so we had no way to get in contact with him. We had to hire that private investigator to find him, and it took him 5 years. And when we went to see him, he was still as angry as ever, still refused to let us talk, and even shot at you, Al!"

"Yeah. But he shot to miss. I screwed that up by the numbers, too. I always taught him his home was his castle. That no one enters a man's home without his permission, no matter who they are. No one makes a man do anything he does not want to do in his own home. He took all those lessons to heart. And by then, he had plenty of reason to hate me, too. Eight words. I keep coming back to that. That was all it took, one moment of lost temper and eight words I can never take back. He was always so black and white about everything. Like I had raised him to be." It was Al's turn to put his face in his hands and sob.

"And after he left, you discovered you were pregnant," Helen said.

"Yes. Two days later I went in for a breast exam, to see why my breasts were so sore. When they compressed my breast, milk was expelled. I had finally started to show, and I was starving all the time, and my breasts were growing full. What we had always wanted, even this late in our lives, even after all my craziness, I was pregnant. Again. I had her DNA tested to be sure she was ours, and she was. If it had been one of those assholes, I'd have aborted it. But she was ours, the miracle we had always prayed for. And I had ruined it, ruined everything, for him, for all of us!"

Colleen put her face in her hands and wept.

Just then, the screen door flew open, and a six-year-old little girl came running in at high speed, a whirlwind blur of blonde hair, in a pretty white dress and sneakers, holding a canning jar full of fireflies.

"Mommy, look how many lightning bugs I caught!" The child stopped in her tracks, seeing the heavy faces of her family. This was something she had seen many times in her short life. She instantly quieted and said, "Oh. Are you sad again, Mommy?"

"Yes, sweetie."

"If I hug you, will you feel better?"

"Always, my little sweetheart." She flew into her mother's arms and wrapped her arms around Colleen's neck. After a moment, she looked up and said,

"Are we really moving to Texas, tomorrow? Can I see a Cowboy?"

"Yes, I'm sure you'll see some. Now get washed up and ready for bed, my darling."

"Ok! I want Grampa Al to read me a story tonight!"

"If you're good, we might be able to talk him into it. But you better get going, or he'll have to go home before you're in bed." Watching her run was like seeing a golden meteor streak up the stairs.

There was silence at the table. Finally, Helen asked, "But why so far away? Why Texas?"

"I can't stay here. All of our friends know what happened, now, at least about Jason leaving because he caught me cheating. It's only a matter of time before one of her friends in school asks if it is true that I was responsible for Jason's death. I am, but she doesn't deserve to face that. I'll tell her one day. I have to. But, when she's a lot older. When she's ready and able to be on her own, I'll tell her and let her hate me forever. And, also, I'm moving there for the same reason Jason did," Colleen said.

"Anyone can start over in Texas. If they truly want to. Texas will always welcome anyone who wants to come and make something of themselves."

The little girl called from upstairs, "I'm in bed now. Grampa Al, are you coming?"

"On my way!"

As he stood up to leave, he put his hand on Colleen's shoulder, and said, "Flowers grow from shit. Maybe life grows from bitterness? Or, life goes on, despite it? None of us here at this table deserves anything good for all of our parts in this. But she does. Life goes on, as it always will. Allison? We'll be moving to Texas as soon as we get things wrapped up here, and you tell us where you decide to settle, Colleen. If you want us nearby?"

She stood and hugged Al, and said, "Yes! Please!"

"We'll be along, too," Frank said.

"Yes," Helen agreed. "It'll take us a bit longer, but we'll be there."

Upstairs, the little girl called out impatiently, "Grampa Al! Where are you?"

"Coming, Jaye!"

END

"Shared pain is pain divided. Shared joy is joy multiplied." From "Callahan's Bar," by Spider Robinson.