Someone To Watch Over You

Chapter 25

I stand at the gate to the palatial looking house, wondering how I ever considered this place home. As I enter the front door it feels like entering one of the great museums filled with many treasures yet cold and empty at the same time, which fits my mood perfectly.

I turn to shut the door behind me, and I hear her voice. "Alex?" I turn to see my mother standing in the foyer. Her appearance shocks me. I've been away for only four years, but she looks as if she's aged ten. What the hell happened to her?

"Oh God, it really is you!" She didn't rush to hug me. Instead, she crumples to her knees.

I drop my duffle. "Mom!" I lift her up in my arms. She's so thin it feels like I'm lifting a small child. I carry her to the next room and place her on the sofa. She grabs a hold of my wrist when I make a move to step back. She is deceptively strong for a woman so frail.

"Please don't go!"

"I'm just going to get you something to drink. I'll be right back." She reluctantly lets me go and I return with a glass of water.

"Thank you!" She takes it from me and I take a seat across from her. I can't get over her transformation. She always looked so young and vibrant. People used to joke about her being one of my father's children. Now her hair is grey, her face is creased with worry lines so deep that even if she were to relax, I doubt they'd go away. The dark circles under her eyes make them look hollow, and she has become so thin her clothes hang on her like drapery upon a rod.

"What happened to you?" The words came out before I have the chance to think them through. My system, too shaken by seeing my mother look like a walking corpse.

She refuses to look at me. She plays with the cup of water in her hand, removing the sweat on the side of the glass with her thumb. "It has been a long time, Alex. You've changed quite a bit too since I had last seen you."

I imagine I have. I was a tall, thin, awkward youth, but now I'm all grown up with a body of a man, built from all my training and dancing over the years. Back then, I could have never lifted her so easily.

"I grew up." I gave as my excuse.

She still refuses to look at me. I see her worrying her bottom lip. Trying, I'm guessing, to keep from crying. Crying isn't allowed in this household. Never was, and I see her struggle against her training. All those years of bottled up emotions have taken their toll on her. Never was she allowed to show any outward display of emotions like anger or sadness. Never did she raise her voice or cry. Always was she the personification of decorum. It frustrates the hell out of me.

"Jesus!" I yell. Standing up, I pace the floor. Just being in this house makes my skin crawl. I half wonder if it isn't too late to get a hotel.

"Alexander James," my mother admonishes, "you know better than to take the Lord's name in vain."

I want to laugh. Of course, this lights the fire under her, brings some life back into that skeletal form of hers, forcing her to make eye contact with me.

"Sit down," she demands.

Autopilot kicks in to comply, guided by the motherly tone of voice until reason took over.

"No, mother. I won't sit down. I will YELL if I want to," I say, raising my voice to say the word with meaning. "His tyranny is OVER. You want to cry for God's sake cry. Cry until you can't weep another tear. Anything is better than living this life devoid of any emotion. The bastard is dead, he can't hurt you anymore."

My mother shot up like a spring from the sofa, anger blazed in her eyes, her hand flew on its own and she struck my face with her open palm.

"He is your Father! And you will speak of him with respect or you are not to speak of him at all!"