Don't Disappoint Me

He would allow himself dreams

Content warning: There is some discussion of emotional abuse in this chapter.

The title of this chapter is from Gregor the Overlander, by Suzanne Collins.

Noah had already told MC a little about his family and background. She knew that his mom had gotten pregnant young, and that his dad had stuck around for about a year. He left her alone with Noah, and they hadn't seen him since. The only thing Noah had of his dad's was an abandoned, but extensive record collection. He had spent a lot of time as a kid, listening to each one, imagining what his father must have been like. His mother didn't like to talk about him much. Each vinyl was like an invisible string on a tin can telephone, connecting them. He ached to hear something from his dad come down that line.

MC also knew that Noah's mom had married another man, Raymond, and had two more kids, Simon and Anna. Noah was about 7 years old when Simon was born, so before that, he spent a lot of time alone, and learned to enjoy it.

"Will you tell me a little more about your family?" she asked on the car ride over.

"Sure, what do you want to know?"

"What was your stepdad like?"

Noah winced. "He..." he began, thinking for a moment, "He was an unpredictable man. Not very stable."

Ray had been a drinker with a volatile personality. He oscillated wildly between amiable and cruel. While he wasn't physically abusive, his rage could be terrifying and erratic. The charismatic, witty side of his personality would often be followed in quick succession by his darker side. As a result, Noah was often wary of overly charming and smooth types.

"How so?" MC asked.

"He drank a lot, and would disappear for weeks at a time. Although, I liked when he was gone. He set everyone on edge."

When Ray was around, he would waver unpredictably between pleasant, loving attention and sudden irrational anger. Noah's response to this was to turn inward, never giving away which emotional state he was in, lest he be taken by surprise and rejected or chastised. He strove to be as even-keeled and as unlike Ray as possible.

Noah took it upon himself to be the stable one in the family. He saw his mother working so hard, and she was the most important person in the world to him. He yearned for his mother's approval, for her to feel that he was someone she could rely on, someone who made her life easier. He helped raise his siblings. He cooked their food, changed their diapers, read them books. He braided Anna's hair. He drove Simon to swim practice. He saw how it hurt his mother and siblings when Ray would be gone for long stretches of time, and so he made it his work to create as happy a home as he could. The silver lining of Ray's absence was the return of the calm, predictable atmosphere. The buzzing tension that Ray created would disperse.

"For example," Noah felt the story coming out of him unconsciously, "once Ray asked me to make him a toastie. My mum was working, and I was watching Simon and Anna. I was about 10, so they weren't much bigger than babies. I got distracted and I burnt the toastie. Ray had been in a good mood, kidding around. But when he saw that toastie, he just lost it. He screamed at me." Noah still remembered the way Ray's eyes had darkened when he saw the blackened bread. No trace of the man who had just been there. He remembered the cold terror that had flooded his small body.

"Oh God, Noah, the toastie..."

"What?"

"Hope got so mad at you about the toastie. You were just cutting it up, like you always did for Simon and Anna, right? And Hope went off on you. I knew it was an overreaction at the time, but I didn't realize...that must have reminded you..."