The Way The World Ends ✓

Chapter 12. Nate

~

Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer-

~

         After Nate walked his father to bed, he slumped on the couch with a long and loud sigh. He didn't know what he was supposed to do. It was too much pressure for a seventeen-year-old kid. He could barely keep his own life together, how was he supposed to keep his father's from falling apart as well?

Of course, he loved his father. Nate liked his father. He just wished that sometimes, he could be the one to fall apart. He didn't want to have to be the parent at times like this. His dad was so fragile that Nate felt like he had to walk on eggshells every time something had to do with his mother. Birthdays, Anniversaries, even just little things that reminded his father of her. Perfume, food, paintings, really anything, even Nate himself sometimes whenever he did anything distinctly like his mother. It made Nate mad sometimes, but the anger soon gave way to pure uselessness. There was nothing he could do. He wasn't enough to make his mother stay and he wasn't enough of his mother to make his father happy.

He picked up a half-empty bottle of vodka from the side table next to the couch. He took a swig, swallowing down the burning liquid hard, then took another, which gave way to a coughing fit. He put his head in his hands and pressed his palms into his eyes to stop his headache. What he would give not to be him for just a day.

He was so angry at his mother. How could she leave him? How could she leave his dad? Were they just that awful of people, or was she the awful one? As much as he wanted to hate her, he couldn't completely bring himself to do it. He never met her. He kept giving her the benefit of the doubt and blaming himself for her abandonment. He had so few memories of his mom, but none of them were bad. Even when she left, she was simply there one moment and then she was gone.

Neither of them saw it coming. They were a happy little family, for the most part. It was true that when his mother found out she was pregnant, she was angry. She never wanted kids because she wanted to focus on her career, working her way up the fashion magazine world. She blamed her husband for impregnating her on purpose because he always wanted a family. He thought that once they were married, she might change her mind. He was wrong. Even when Nate was born, she was still unhappy. She was never the mother type. She didn't want to spend her time watching a baby, changing diapers, getting up in the middle of the night when he cried. She didn't have a motherly instinct.

She stuck it out for five years, hoping things would get better and that the motherly part of her would kick into gear. She tried her best, but her best wasn't good enough for her or her son. She was a bad mother. She didn't know how to deal with a child; how to discipline, how to play, how to do anything kid related. She became extremely jealous and bitter of her husband. He, on the other hand, was amazing with their son. He always seemed to know what he was doing. He always knew that he wanted at least several children.

There was one moment for Nate's mother that was the breaking point. I was Nate's fifth birthday, and she had forgotten. His father took Nate to the zoo, made him a cake, had a few of his kindergarten friends over, and bought him his first bicycle. Meanwhile, his mother came home late after a work party, drunk off her ass and having come dangerously close to another affair, and got into a fight with her husband. He wanted to know why she ignored her son, why he was the only one there for him, and why he barely saw her at home. Was she having an affair? She told him that she wasn't, but they both knew that was a lie. She was a no strings attached kind of girl, not a cookie cutter housewife. This wasn't the life she wanted, and she told her husband that.