I Forgave You Anyway Read online

  I Forgave You Anyway

  B.S. Steele

  W & B Book Publishers

  USA

  I Forgave You Anyway © 2019. All rights reserved by author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any informational storage retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  W & B Publishers

  For information:

  W & B Publishers

  9001 Ridge Hill Street

  Kernersville, NC 27284

  www.a-argusbooks.com

  ISBN: 9781635541724

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Book Cover designed by Melissa Carrigee

  Printed in the United States of America

  Chapter 1: Salt n’ Sugar

  I sat buried between my couch cushions, my left butt cheek slowly sinking toward the springs. Normally, I’d mash the cushions back together and threaten to glue them in place for the hundredth time. Instead, I just sat there, ignoring the springs that were digging into my backside. I shifted rigidly in an attempt to uncork the stiff coils that threatened to shish kabob my innards. My eyes began to burn from the few tears I’d let escape, the salt drying out my contact lenses. I’d been sitting on this bastard of a couch for nearly nine consecutive hours watching re-runs of the fairy tale odyssey ‘Once Upon a Time’ on Netflix. My television dimmed, politely asking me if I was still watching.

  Yes, baby. I’m still here. I thought sarcastically.

  I was irritated that even my television seemed hell bent on reminding me that I’d been a non-productive member of society for almost a full twenty-four hours. Leaning forward, I grabbed the side of my flimsy coffee table and pulled myself up, grunting like a bloated, milk-drunk baby dinosaur, barely managing to pull myself to[BS1] my feet and shuffle into the kitchen to re-heat the plate of nachos I’d been picking at for the last hour.

  Maybe this was how people ended up on shows like ‘My 600 Pound Life,’ I mused,

  watching my reflection in the microwave window.

  The nachos spun slowly under the microwave lights like a new Mustang on a sales floor. My complexion was pale, looking flat and stark against my pile of dark hair that had been carelessly thrown into a nest atop my head. I’d graduated over the last few days from ‘messy bun,’ to the ever-growing trend I’d dubbed ‘basic bitch bun,’ which simply meant that the bun had increased to maximum size and volume, with a sort of forward flop to it, suggesting I’d either recently been at the beach, the mall, or perhaps even the gym. Reality check: I’d been to none of those places in weeks. In fact, I was laid off from my job for the winter and if I was being completely honest, I was totally lost. In just two days’ time I’d cash my last paycheck and I had no idea where to go from there. Numbness seemed easier than facing the gnawing anxiety that had been growing in my gut, so that’s what I decided I would do. I’d be numb for now.

  Just for today, I thought, knowing full well I was lying to myself.

  I knew I didn’t have any more control over this depression than I did over the rain that had started to pound on the roof above me. Sucking absentmindedly on my tongue, I winced at the stale remnants of my morning coffee. Its sour film had left my mouth feeling like I’d eaten a ball of cotton. In hopes of evading the mirror, I switched on the dimmest light in my bathroom and ran my toothbrush under the water. With my opposite hand, I scrolled through the apps on my cell phone, tapping on the cheerful blue Facebook icon. I’d already been on Facebook a hundred times today, with total salty disregard for the inspirational bullshit people had been posting. I rolled my eyes at the plastic virtual world I seemed so estranged from. Everyone seemed insistent on convincing themselves how picture perfect their lives were. Even my own page was a distorted kaleidoscope depicting that I was the ideal single Mother who had been living my best life since my ex-husband cheated on me with the neighbor just a few short months ago. I looked so happy in my photos, posing with my son Michael while hiding the dark circles and disappointment with good lighting and even better photo filters.

  David’s page was even worse. He posed as the glowing, happy single man, sticking his newly freed phallus in every halfway decent lonely MILF he’d found in the dark recesses of internet dating sites. Then again, maybe I was just jaded, stalking his social media like the typical crazy ex-wife. Maybe the problem had always been me, and now that I was out of his life, he was truly happy.

  Nah, I laughed to myself. David was miserable, just like I was.

  At least I had one thing to be happy about. Summer was nearly behind me and I’d met new people and made friends along the way. Working through my depression had been the hardest thing I’d ever done, but I was still above ground and for that I was thankful.

  I started to reflect on what I’d learned from the days I’d spent at my job on the boat harbor. Most mornings I’d sit on the dock, hoping to catch a glimpse of a dolphin or two as I waited for my day to begin. I’d been working at a tourist trap along the Gulf of Mexico, selling cruise tickets and answering the questions of anxious vacationers all summer. I greeted men in floppy fishing hats, white sunscreen shamelessly slathered on their noses, toting diaper bags and beach towels while their wives strutted along the dock in their designer sunglasses shamelessly flaunting their latest plastic surgery. Their coifed children were pulled along by leashes, phones and iPads stuck to their faces like the mussels that clung to the pilings in the bay.

  I loved it on the docks. My boss had me posted at a one-man kiosk right in front of the parked fishing boats. I’d stand in the sweltering sun aimlessly handing out brochures and reciting the cruise tagline from memory, barely seeing the faces that swarmed around me like bees hungry for a lick from a toppled soda can. I learned the names of the fish that were pulled from the deep-sea fishing tours. Amberjack, Mackerel, Red Fish and the occasional small shark were the most common catches. I would always cringe when the fishermen hauled a half dead shark up on the dock, posing and smiling with the paying customers for a pricy photo. It was nothing more than a souvenir that the tourists would show their friends back home, giving them cheap bragging rights and an impressive fish tale. I imagined them exclaiming how they’d clung onto their reel, fighting the sharp-toothed predator for hours before finally bringing the beast to port.

  The fishermen stood on their boats, crinkling their eyes like they were shielding them from the sun, but I knew it was more than that. The charter companies were the real bosses on the harbor and the money talked louder than the fish. I truly believed the fishermen loved the sea as much as they loved the sport, but the power of the almighty dollar was no match for Mother nature. Opportunists took advantage of rich men blowing off steam and collecting exotic trophies. Despite how the locals felt, the sharks continued to be hauled into the overcrowded harbor by tourists desperate to take home a small piece of paradise. Like modern day pirates navigating the nautical maps, the fishermen went out to find hidden coves to bring in the day’s catch. I think it killed them a little inside to show the secrets of the seas to the ignorant and pompous men who had no respect for the traditions of the old seafarers.

  Smile, flash, click, the reek of shark flesh and splash! The beast was hung under the boat to be dragged out to sea and dumped like trash, it’s death in vain. I figured that’s why the fishermen drank so much. Maybe they needed to be numb, just like I needed to be numb.

  The one social justice for the sharks came in the form of Koreans who scuffled in after the tourists left, deftly pulling the s
hark carcasses out of the water and slicing off their fins, whisking them away on carts to be made into soup. They always kept their heads down, watching only the pavement in front of them. I could never be sure if they were avoiding looking at people, or if they just didn’t want to catch the attention of the security police. Either way, it was one of those things nobody complained about. I suppose it felt right that some part of the shark’s death was justified, even if that meant bending the rules a little. Like the first scent of fall wafting up from the baked August earth, I knew change was coming. I’d let myself meld with the days, not thinking about what would happen next, only what was happening right then.

  My nights were spent on the boat drinking left over beer from the kegs while watching the moon rise over the harbor. I worked every extra hour I could to pass the time while waiting for fall, when my son Michael would return home. He was eight years old that summer and as the custody agreement ordered, he was living with his Father during the school break.

  Michael’s Father David had been my first true love, right out of High school. I’d been young, full of hope and most poignant of all: impeccably stupid. I fell in love with David with ease, lapping up every sappy moment and believing in him with the kind of faith only the young are afforded. Exactly one year into our romance we left college to spend summer break in our hometown. Carelessly taking over David’s Mother’s living room, we assumed the role of king and queen of her two-bedroom trailer in the country. His Mother was surprisingly more than happy to let us stay and although she grumbled about the mess we continuously left for her, she seemed content having our company. It was clear how much she worshiped David, but then again, we all worshiped David. His Mother, his three sisters and I made up David’s royal court, each lady willing and ready to serve any need he might have. The only time David wasn’t King was when his Father rolled into town, riding on his giant semi-truck.

  From the moment his Father’s leather traveling bag hit the table David became the eunuch, jester and the village idiot all rolled into one. His Father was a functioning alcoholic with squinty eyes and shriveled skin the color of burnt sand. He had a foreboding nature and a sinister laugh that chilled me to the bone. I wasn’t afraid, but I was certainly repulsed by him. He gave me the creeps more than once when I’d felt his beady little eyes on my body parts whenever I’d walk by. Needless to say, I avoided him at all costs. David was shrunken and sour whenever his Father was around, so it was a relief when it was time for Emperor Ceepinstein to get back on the road. I’d refused to call him The Godfather, despite the “humble” request that he’d made for me to do so.

  The night he asked me to call him The Godfather, he’d been drunk as piss and feeling nostalgic, dragging me and all his children out for a 2:00 A.M. stroll under the stars. David gave me a weak apology when I protested his obnoxious demand for us to get up, his beer breath hissing in my face. Everyone jumped when the Emperor said so. Even David who was by all counts, supposed to be a grown man. Only David’s Mother got to go back to dream land that night. Sadly, that was only because The Emperor didn’t want her around unless she was cooking or washing his clothes. Thankfully, Emperor Creepinstein eventually went back on the road, driving far enough away that I could forget he ever existed.

  It was about June that I began to think I was dying from an unholy demonic ulcer that seemed to be eating away at my insides. Instead, the local doctor informed me that while I did not have an ulcer, I did have a baby growing inside my pear-sized uterus, making me approximately two months pregnant.

  David was ecstatic, crying and jumping for joy, telling everyone that his wish had come true. He was going to be a Father and he knew without a doubt it was going to be a boy, just like he had prayed for since he was eight years old. I was shocked and scared, but I smiled despite myself. I didn’t want to ruin David’s big moment or make him start doubting me. I was only nineteen and barely through my first year of college. I’d been on birth control, but I knew I had forgotten it a few times. It had been me who had joked with David about a having a family together someday. Maybe I’d secretly wanted this. I was lucky anyway, since the doctor had told me in High school that it would most likely be difficult for me to get pregnant in the future.

  Some doctor she was, I thought bitterly.

  My parents and family were going to be so disappointed. I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant this young. I was supposed to make something out of myself first. I was supposed to be “safe” before starting a family. Safe from needing a man, or anybody else for that matter. Now here I was pregnant, terrified and just a teensy-weensy bit excited. Maybe I could start to allow myself to feel happy about this tiny human that had naively chosen me as its Mother.

  How could I have known that just a few short years later, David and I would be facing divorce? That after years of begging him to be a good Father to the baby he had prayed so hard for, we would decide to go our separate ways. That I would feel like the world’s biggest failure, knowing I would break every vow I made to David and that the baby would suffer because of choices I had made? The only penance I would allow myself was the realization that those vows had been made in complete ignorance. I hadn’t known just exactly the horrors David was capable of, nor the abuse that he would nearly drown me in.

  ***

  Four years later, I left David and made yet another naïve vow. I resolved to make David a hero for Michael’s sake. I told myself that Michael did not need to know the dark reasons I’d decided to leave his Father. I promised myself I would be the ideal co-parent: positive and blissful. I imagined how I’d be so emotionally healthy and accepting of the divorce that Michael would barely feel the hole that David and I had ripped in his life. I refused to file the charges of domestic violence that would have destroyed David’s career and reputation, just like my sister Emma had held off filing her own paperwork against him years before when he’d molested her in her own bedroom when she was barely sixteen. Emma would keep David’s secrets for my sake, holding onto it for years while I desperately tried to understand why I could never make him happy. I told myself I was doing it for Michael and that he didn’t deserve to have the embarrassment and shame laid upon his tiny shoulders. I didn’t want Michael to be punished for his Father’s foolishness. I thought David would change and that eventually he would see things clearly for our son’s sake. I thought somewhere inside his hardened heart, he must love me. If not me, at least he had to love Michael. The years with David had taken their toll and I began to barely recognize myself. The abnormal became normal, the immoral, moral.

  Michael was the purest light in my life for a long time after I left David. While most Mothers can be heard saying similar words, anyone that had ever met Michael would have agreed. He was like a sun of his own, smiling and always excited about even the smallest of joys. Little Michael was more than just a son to me. He was my reason for surviving and hanging on to the shreds of my dreams. He was the inspiration for the promises that I’d made from the day he took his first breath. Michael showed me every day that I could not only go on after leaving his Father, but that there was life at the other end of divorce.

  He had this way of never complaining when I was feeling sad and just when the darkness felt like it would take over, he’d ask me to play puppets with him or shriek in delight over the simplest moment. Michael always made me feel like he’d hit the lottery being my son. Seemingly out of the blue, he’d chirp some wise, deeply reflective thought well beyond his years. Before I could recover from my shock, he would transform, again becoming my wild four-year-old heathen, telling me how he only wanted the blue popsicles and exactly five glowsticks.

  Michael wasn’t only that way with me, but with everyone he loved. He was the child who would run to a person the minute he recognized them, his arms wide open, pure innocence and joy imbuing his every cell as he jumped into the embrace of whomever he greeted. That was my son, the boy who believed that trees had feelings, and that I was the most amazing Mom in the world.
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  Living apart from Michael had taken me outside of myself. I had constant obsessive thoughts about his safety and happiness that threatened to drive me to near insanity. David was fair about keeping me in contact, but it wasn’t enough. I worked overtime to forget that I wouldn’t be tucking him in. When I wasn’t working, I drank the night away, dancing and socializing until I found my way home and collapsed into my bed. Unable to fight sleep, I welcomed the black dreamless state that was my only respite from the aching hole that missing Michael had left. I kept myself going with the promise that in just a matter of a few short weeks my time would again be filled with bedtime stories and 6:00 A.M. cartoons. The school year would start, and Michael and I would slip back into our routine. I was looking forward to having him back with me, but the impending cycle of paying bills was beginning to loom over my head like a plump apple at the top of a tree I could never quite reach.

  Chapter 2: Skeletons

  For the moment I needed a hero to live vicariously through, so I sat back down on my lumpy couch. Balancing my re-heated nachos on my lap, I wrapped myself in the fuzzy grey blanket that lay next to me and settled in for another episode of ‘Once Upon a Time’. As the fairy tale characters played out their drama on the screen, a snippet of dialogue caught my attention: “. . . evil isn’t born, it’s made.”

  Well, my Mother had been born, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t encountered anything more painful than our relationship. Then again, my broken marriage to David had certainly been a hefty contender. More than a few people assumed that’s why I had “become” a lesbian. Mommy issues coupled with a five-year marriage that couldn’t be summed up as anything less than a tragic comedy.