Queen of the 40 Thieves, chapter 55
"So what brought you here, Mrs....Bandembrouke?"
I sighed, "I...I-I...come on, you must know why I'm here," I finally said avoiding eye contact with the therapist in front of me.
"I understand some issues are hard to talk about, but you need to try to calm down and talk, at least a little, and the results will be amazing." I remained in silence, but in my mind, I was laughing at this man's words. "Do you think you'd be more comfortable if your husband left the room?" he finally asked after a long silence.
I looked into the blue eyes of the man sitting by my side and then looked back at the therapist in front of me. "No, I don't think so."
"That's fine. So why don't you try to tell me what's the reason why you're here?"
"I..."
"If you're not comfortable that's understandable, we could talk about something else, whatever you want, until you feel more relaxed...so where do you work?"
"I write articles for a news paper of Illinois."
"I thought your last name sounded familiar. Sounds like a very interesting job."
"Compared to your work, I bet."
The therapist looked at me with wide opened eyes. "So you don't like your job all that much?"
"I do but...oh my god...this is so stupid! Listen, I self-harm. I've been cutting myself for the last sixteen years or so, I've been to so many therapists that I really can't recall if I've been with you before...what can you do for me?"
"Well, you could get interned in the hospital for a few weeks, to treat you as an inside patient, we could try with antidepressants and different kinds of therapies. I could also treat you as an outside patient...there are lots of different therapies we could try."
"I've been self-harming for the past sixteen years, and I forgot to add that my husband is a Christian and apparently somewhere in the bible it says that self-injury is a sin, so I can assure you that I've been on hundreds of therapies and pills and everything. I've been outside patient and inside patient and whatever other thing you can think about...and obviously nothing of that has worked with me because I'm here right now with bandages on my wrists because I cut myself several times last night! Can you do some sort of lobotomy on me and strip whatever part of my brain that makes me cut?!"
"No, but I can offe-"
"I thought so! So nothing you can offer me will help me because I've already been there and done that!" I stood up and grabbed the hand of the blue-eyed man sitting by my side, dragging him to the door of the office of the therapist. I opened the door quickly and pushed him to the other side, before leaving I turned around and looked at the therapist. "If my last name sounds familiar to you is only because you must have treated me before, because I write articles about music, and if you read them, or at least had the smallest information about what's going on in the music industry you would know who this man is! If you had at least watched the Grammy's you'd know I'm not his wife!" then I slammed the door behind me and rushed with Mike into the elevator. Other three persons were inside and they all stepped aside letting me pass, probably seeing that I was in a rush.
"Wow...that was the harsh," Mike finally spoke quietly once the elevator's door had closed in front of us.
"Excuse me, but that man was a complete hypocrite...and he obviously has no idea of what is going on in the world besides the gas prices. A person who doesn't watch the Grammy doesn't watch TV. Maybe I would have ended up teaching him about my self-injury."
"Please, not everyone has to know a damn thing about Green Day. And I bet you are neither the first nor the last person he sees who self-harms," he said once we were already outside of the elevator. I exhaled sharply and shook my head as I continued walking, just a moment after I felt Mike's hand on my shoulder making me turn around. "Can you just give him another chance?"
"Of course I can't!"
"Please...at least now he knows I'm not your husband and that he hasn't read any of your articles," he insisted.
"Can we just leave? Really, I feel like crap, and most shrinks tend to just make me feel worst, and this wasn't an exception."
"But there are more shrinks in this building! Can't we make an appointment with another one...of your choice?"
"No!" I sighed as I took out of my shoulder bag the keys of my cars. "Listen, I really would rather to do this on my own way, okay? I promised you I wouldn't cut again while we're here, and I'm trying my best to stick to that promise. But shrinks are of those people that make it hard for me to cope and that makes me feel like cutting myself every fucking time that they say they can help, simply because I think that's crap! I've been to so many therapists and they all say the same shit but they can do nothing."
"That's because they can't stop cutting for you. If it doesn't work it's because you decided it doesn't work."
"Shut up!" I yelled as I hopped in the driver seat of my car and slammed the door in a moment of anger. Mike, shyly, got in the car and closed the door slowly.
"I-"
"Save it for later. I feel like crap and I just want to go back to my place," I said cutting Mike off before he could even form half a sentence.
* * *
Once I got home, I dyed my hair back to my natural colour with the hair dyer I had got at some store on the way to the apartment building where I lived. Mike was there for most of the time, behind me and always "keeping an eye on me", as well as keeping me entertained with different conversations about everything that came to mind. However, once I was done with my hair, I went to Megan's to call Jenny home so we could have dinner and then, I finally found a moment of concentration to continue with writing this letter, but of course that Mike wouldn't leave me alone for more than half an hour or so, which at some point became kind of annoying, until he found something to keep his own mind busy when Jenny, proudly and shyly at the same time, decided to show Mike the article about American Idiot that we had written together after the release of your album, and after that, he started reviewing all the articles I had published during all the years I worked for the paper, pointing one out to Jenny every now and then, while Jenny started to make a photo album with old and new pictures of me alone, and some with her, which she would give to her father after New Year's Eve.
For a moment everything seemed surreal, and I felt like I was watching Mike, my daughter and myself, from a corner of the room, I guess that probably was product of the fact that in my mind I was living past stages of my life as I brought them to the paper for you to eventually read them, while I watched Mike and Jenny sitting on the floor by the side of my bed, with all those articles and pictures. It felt like every single moment of my life was present in that moment.
And I guess right now you must be wondering why in hell you're reading all this rambling from me.
I guess you will have to find that out on yourself. See this as just another Letterbomb, one that you might be able to write another song about in the future, if that's what you want.
But here I am, it's 2am of the December 28th, and I'm asking myself something too: Why in hell did I decide to write down all my life for you? Well, I guess I just want to share all my experience with you, and whoever else you decide to show this to, because I don't want anybody to do the same mistakes I did.
Right now Mike just read out loud the article I wrote when Kurt Cobain died, and it brought tears to my eyes. Yes, I cried when I found out he had died. However, it just made me remind the fact that I've always sucked at writing the ends for everything, and I guess this letter isn't the exception, so I'll just let you know, that this is the end of my story. I can't say what the future will bring, especially considering that I'm still pretty clueless about how all this situation will end, so all I have left to say is the final goodbye of every letter, but before I needed to write something that could help you explain yourself why you wasted hours (or days or months) reading this...
But nothing comes to mind.
Whatsername.
***End of Whatsername's letter***
Whatsername was right.
At first when I started reading her letter, and it told, in her own words, "I was just in the middle of a class, but I just couldn't take it anymore" and the rest of the story of when she decided to leave and everything that happened in her life since then, I was like "what the fuck?"
Probably that's why I decided to start this story the same way she started her letter.
I got her letter on December 29th, about three hours before it was time for me to go pick her up at the airport, where I'd also be picking up Jenny and my friend Mike, who were returning with her. But the fact that I had just got on my hands a fat package from her, knowing that she must have been already on the plane that'd take her back here, I just couldn't help but open it and start reading, and once I did, it was hard to stop. I guess what made it kind of addictive was the fact that all my questions about her past and who she was, as well as her ideals, thoughts and feelings found an answer on her letter.
Except for the main questions of all:
What's her name?
Anyways, after picking them up at the airport, I drove Mike to his place and then Whatsername and Jenny to mine, where Jamie and Jack were anxiously waiting for them, and even Brian was waiting for them too, probably due to a mix of being tired and needing help with the boys, being this the first time he ever had to take care of his sons by himself for more than just a few hours, and also missing Whatsername, after all, he still loved her, despite the fact that he was really upset about her cheating on him with who he thought was a long forgotten love.
I had also let him know about his wife's achievement as soon as Mike told me she hadn't cut in the last three days, and you could see this spark of happiness in his eyes as soon as he was able to see with his own eyes that she had really let Mike take care of her cuts, thing that he had accomplished only a few times in all the years of marriage they had, and that, apparently, she really hadn't cut over the last three days.
Once we were at our place I also told Whatsername that my wife and I had "cleaned" her room while she was away. She seemed really embarrassed and her cheeks became red, but other than that, there wasn't any kind of emotive reaction, whether it was relief, anger or sadness, she just nodded her head and continued her way into the room. She seemed really emotionless since I picked her up at the airport. I figured that for her cutting might have been also a way of feeling alive, to make that feeling of being numb go away, so I thought it'd go away within a few days, and I paid no more attention to it, so, ignoring the fact that Mike had told me she was really devastated because of all the things that were going on in her life at the moment, I decided not to worry; instead, I just became quite happy about the fact she hadn't just run out the door to go find new blades. "Maybe this time she's decided to stop," is what I thought.
Well, after warning Whatsername that she wouldn't find any blades in her room (hopefully), I headed back to my room where I peacefully continued reading her letter.
Whatsername never brought up anything about the letter, except for a moment when she asked me if I had already got it, but she said nothing else. It was something that was always there, but never mentioned, even though we did share some weird looks after she confirmed that I was already reading the letter.
The next day, Jesus took Whatsername and Jenny, mother and daughter, out for a ride around Oakland and stuff. From what they told me later that day, he took them to a couple of shopping malls, which apparently wasn't such a good idea because both, "M.I." and Jenny hated shopping, and later, after taking them to eat to some nice and kind of fancy place, he took them to the bay.
But it wasn't just any bay.
It was a bay that meant a lot to Jesus. Apparently, even though that in his "reality", Jimmy killed himself in a bay in New York, after he came back to California, he would constantly dream with that episode, and he'd see Jimmy blowing his brains out into that bay. It was always a very lonely area, mostly at that time of the year, so they probably got to see a splendid sunset all by themselves.
And while they were out having fun, I stayed home, reading Whatsername's letter.
Finally, during the morning of December 31st, I finished reading the letter. It was so intense to see how her life had been put upside down over the last few months just because an old lost love had come back into her life. And it also made me feel kind of guilty, since if we hadn't forced her to start a road that would lead her back to him, nothing of what had been taking place during the last few days would have happened. Then I slapped those thoughts from my head, "For god's sake, Billie, she loves him, she would have lived the rest of her life wondering what would happen if she someday decided to reach him and tell him she still loves him and that they had a daughter. What we did was the right thing, and in the end, they'll end up back together and they'll have to thank us!" I thought as I shook my head.
However, she was right.
Even after I had read the entire letter, I still wasn't sure about why she had suddenly decided to tell me the story of her life so far. "Who knows? Maybe she wants a punk-rock opera just about her... "
"Hey, that's actually a good idea, I have enough material here with me to do that...and it'd be a good story..."
Anyways, New Year's Eve party was going to be celebrated at Mike's house.
You just needed to walk inside the living room that night to sense the tension between the guests. Everybody knew what had happened between Whatsername and Jesus at the end of the Christmas party, except for Mary Jane, of course.
Jesus called me an hour after the party was over, telling me that at some point of the night, when Whatsername had been left alone in the kitchen with him, she asked him with some irritation if he was ever going to tell Mary Jane what had happened between them at Tré's house a week ago, and being Jesus under so much pressure already that night, taking care that nobody would get too drunk like to say out loud that he had slept with Whatsername, and trying to act normal around Brian, even though the cop was basically killing him with his look, Whatsername's request just added an amazing pressure to that he already had on his shoulders, so he pretty much lost if and totally freaked out, starting to yell at her to back off and to not pressure him, which led to an argue which he ended by yelling at the green-eyed woman that he wasn't going to tell Mary Jane a damn thing about their one-night stand anymore, not that night, not tomorrow, not ever.
It was just after I got his call that I started to understand her fear of spending the rest of her life lonely. It seemed pretty obvious now, in her mind, she was sure Jesus wasn't going to talk to Mary Jane and that what he promised her would never come truth. Jenny now had also a dad who to visit on weekends, holidays and vacations, and she would turn eighteen soon anyways, seeing as kids grow so fast before our eyes, and then she'd leave for college, work, and eventually, her own family. As far as she was concerned, Brian was, definitely, going to have the custody of their kids, and probably, once they were divorced, Brian would soon find another woman and get married, because he was a really good man, and she probably thought nobody would ever want to marry her or spend the rest of their life with her. In her letter I got to understand that she thought that Brian married her probably just as an act of charity. I planned to talk to Whatsername later that day, after getting some rest, to assure her that Jesus would eventually tell Mary Jane that he had slept with her, even though that, as Whatsername said on her letter, Jesus has his weakness; and exactly because of that he'd end up talking to his wife, simply because he wouldn't be able to live with the fucking guilt for more than a month or two.
Anyways, going back to the party, it must have been around 6am of the January 1st when everyone headed back to their places, and of course that Whatsername, her future ex-husband, her daughter, and theirs two sons came back to my place in my wife's car, which she had lend them while they stayed at our place so they could feel free to move around the bay area.
But I had barely had a few hours of sleep when I woke up at my wife's voice calling me from a side of the bed.
Jenny couldn't find her mom anywhere, and the thirty-three years old woman had left her cellphone in the guestroom of my house where she was staying.
After doing some quick search around the house, even though that in the back of my mind I knew it was useless because Jenny should have looked all around the house already, my wife told me that her car wasn't parked anywhere near the house. I called Mike and Tré, and she wasn't there either. However, the two of them came over to my house, and between some random chatting and a good breakfast, we forgot that she wasn't around, thinking that she probably had gone out to buy something, tampons maybe, who knows? But I thought that, unfortunately, she was probably looking for a store where to find blades, and that might take her sometime, considering that she didn't know the area, and the fact that stores don't put big signs on their windows announcing that they sale blades, not to mention that it was January 1st and most of the population of the area must have been still sleeping after a good New Year's Eve party. Besides, Brian had also told us she likes to go on long walks when she needs to digest something big.
During our conversation I mentioned a little bit about the conversation that Jesus had told me on the phone that he had had with Whatsername at Mike's house, to which Brian commented that if his wife got through this without cutting herself, and by the moment of the divorce she still hadn't hurt herself again, he would tell her that if she definitely stopped self-harming he wouldn't ask for the full custody of Jamie and Jack. I know that Tré, Mike and I felt quite happy about this comment, even though I think we were also kind of worried about what would happen if she came back with some new cuts covering her arms.
But after a long while we started to get worried. Tré and I finally hopped in my car and Mike in his and we started to drive around the area, trying to find my wife's car parked somewhere, or maybe Whatsername herself walking around the bay area. But nothing...
"The bay!"
Of course than just then I remembered that Jenny had told me that Jesus had taken them to that lonely bay he loves and hates at the same time, so we headed there.
"I bet she thought that bay is a great place to go for a walk and clear her mind, it's really lovely and quiet. She must be there."
All I had in mind as I drove there was to find Whatsername, bring her back to my place and give her a comforting hug, then tell her all my thoughts about how Jesus would end up telling Mary Jane about the night they spent together, exactly because of the same reason why she thought he wouldn't: because he has his weakness.
I sighed, "I...I-I...come on, you must know why I'm here," I finally said avoiding eye contact with the therapist in front of me.
"I understand some issues are hard to talk about, but you need to try to calm down and talk, at least a little, and the results will be amazing." I remained in silence, but in my mind, I was laughing at this man's words. "Do you think you'd be more comfortable if your husband left the room?" he finally asked after a long silence.
I looked into the blue eyes of the man sitting by my side and then looked back at the therapist in front of me. "No, I don't think so."
"That's fine. So why don't you try to tell me what's the reason why you're here?"
"I..."
"If you're not comfortable that's understandable, we could talk about something else, whatever you want, until you feel more relaxed...so where do you work?"
"I write articles for a news paper of Illinois."
"I thought your last name sounded familiar. Sounds like a very interesting job."
"Compared to your work, I bet."
The therapist looked at me with wide opened eyes. "So you don't like your job all that much?"
"I do but...oh my god...this is so stupid! Listen, I self-harm. I've been cutting myself for the last sixteen years or so, I've been to so many therapists that I really can't recall if I've been with you before...what can you do for me?"
"Well, you could get interned in the hospital for a few weeks, to treat you as an inside patient, we could try with antidepressants and different kinds of therapies. I could also treat you as an outside patient...there are lots of different therapies we could try."
"I've been self-harming for the past sixteen years, and I forgot to add that my husband is a Christian and apparently somewhere in the bible it says that self-injury is a sin, so I can assure you that I've been on hundreds of therapies and pills and everything. I've been outside patient and inside patient and whatever other thing you can think about...and obviously nothing of that has worked with me because I'm here right now with bandages on my wrists because I cut myself several times last night! Can you do some sort of lobotomy on me and strip whatever part of my brain that makes me cut?!"
"No, but I can offe-"
"I thought so! So nothing you can offer me will help me because I've already been there and done that!" I stood up and grabbed the hand of the blue-eyed man sitting by my side, dragging him to the door of the office of the therapist. I opened the door quickly and pushed him to the other side, before leaving I turned around and looked at the therapist. "If my last name sounds familiar to you is only because you must have treated me before, because I write articles about music, and if you read them, or at least had the smallest information about what's going on in the music industry you would know who this man is! If you had at least watched the Grammy's you'd know I'm not his wife!" then I slammed the door behind me and rushed with Mike into the elevator. Other three persons were inside and they all stepped aside letting me pass, probably seeing that I was in a rush.
"Wow...that was the harsh," Mike finally spoke quietly once the elevator's door had closed in front of us.
"Excuse me, but that man was a complete hypocrite...and he obviously has no idea of what is going on in the world besides the gas prices. A person who doesn't watch the Grammy doesn't watch TV. Maybe I would have ended up teaching him about my self-injury."
"Please, not everyone has to know a damn thing about Green Day. And I bet you are neither the first nor the last person he sees who self-harms," he said once we were already outside of the elevator. I exhaled sharply and shook my head as I continued walking, just a moment after I felt Mike's hand on my shoulder making me turn around. "Can you just give him another chance?"
"Of course I can't!"
"Please...at least now he knows I'm not your husband and that he hasn't read any of your articles," he insisted.
"Can we just leave? Really, I feel like crap, and most shrinks tend to just make me feel worst, and this wasn't an exception."
"But there are more shrinks in this building! Can't we make an appointment with another one...of your choice?"
"No!" I sighed as I took out of my shoulder bag the keys of my cars. "Listen, I really would rather to do this on my own way, okay? I promised you I wouldn't cut again while we're here, and I'm trying my best to stick to that promise. But shrinks are of those people that make it hard for me to cope and that makes me feel like cutting myself every fucking time that they say they can help, simply because I think that's crap! I've been to so many therapists and they all say the same shit but they can do nothing."
"That's because they can't stop cutting for you. If it doesn't work it's because you decided it doesn't work."
"Shut up!" I yelled as I hopped in the driver seat of my car and slammed the door in a moment of anger. Mike, shyly, got in the car and closed the door slowly.
"I-"
"Save it for later. I feel like crap and I just want to go back to my place," I said cutting Mike off before he could even form half a sentence.
* * *
Once I got home, I dyed my hair back to my natural colour with the hair dyer I had got at some store on the way to the apartment building where I lived. Mike was there for most of the time, behind me and always "keeping an eye on me", as well as keeping me entertained with different conversations about everything that came to mind. However, once I was done with my hair, I went to Megan's to call Jenny home so we could have dinner and then, I finally found a moment of concentration to continue with writing this letter, but of course that Mike wouldn't leave me alone for more than half an hour or so, which at some point became kind of annoying, until he found something to keep his own mind busy when Jenny, proudly and shyly at the same time, decided to show Mike the article about American Idiot that we had written together after the release of your album, and after that, he started reviewing all the articles I had published during all the years I worked for the paper, pointing one out to Jenny every now and then, while Jenny started to make a photo album with old and new pictures of me alone, and some with her, which she would give to her father after New Year's Eve.
For a moment everything seemed surreal, and I felt like I was watching Mike, my daughter and myself, from a corner of the room, I guess that probably was product of the fact that in my mind I was living past stages of my life as I brought them to the paper for you to eventually read them, while I watched Mike and Jenny sitting on the floor by the side of my bed, with all those articles and pictures. It felt like every single moment of my life was present in that moment.
And I guess right now you must be wondering why in hell you're reading all this rambling from me.
I guess you will have to find that out on yourself. See this as just another Letterbomb, one that you might be able to write another song about in the future, if that's what you want.
But here I am, it's 2am of the December 28th, and I'm asking myself something too: Why in hell did I decide to write down all my life for you? Well, I guess I just want to share all my experience with you, and whoever else you decide to show this to, because I don't want anybody to do the same mistakes I did.
Right now Mike just read out loud the article I wrote when Kurt Cobain died, and it brought tears to my eyes. Yes, I cried when I found out he had died. However, it just made me remind the fact that I've always sucked at writing the ends for everything, and I guess this letter isn't the exception, so I'll just let you know, that this is the end of my story. I can't say what the future will bring, especially considering that I'm still pretty clueless about how all this situation will end, so all I have left to say is the final goodbye of every letter, but before I needed to write something that could help you explain yourself why you wasted hours (or days or months) reading this...
But nothing comes to mind.
Whatsername.
***End of Whatsername's letter***
Whatsername was right.
At first when I started reading her letter, and it told, in her own words, "I was just in the middle of a class, but I just couldn't take it anymore" and the rest of the story of when she decided to leave and everything that happened in her life since then, I was like "what the fuck?"
Probably that's why I decided to start this story the same way she started her letter.
I got her letter on December 29th, about three hours before it was time for me to go pick her up at the airport, where I'd also be picking up Jenny and my friend Mike, who were returning with her. But the fact that I had just got on my hands a fat package from her, knowing that she must have been already on the plane that'd take her back here, I just couldn't help but open it and start reading, and once I did, it was hard to stop. I guess what made it kind of addictive was the fact that all my questions about her past and who she was, as well as her ideals, thoughts and feelings found an answer on her letter.
Except for the main questions of all:
What's her name?
Anyways, after picking them up at the airport, I drove Mike to his place and then Whatsername and Jenny to mine, where Jamie and Jack were anxiously waiting for them, and even Brian was waiting for them too, probably due to a mix of being tired and needing help with the boys, being this the first time he ever had to take care of his sons by himself for more than just a few hours, and also missing Whatsername, after all, he still loved her, despite the fact that he was really upset about her cheating on him with who he thought was a long forgotten love.
I had also let him know about his wife's achievement as soon as Mike told me she hadn't cut in the last three days, and you could see this spark of happiness in his eyes as soon as he was able to see with his own eyes that she had really let Mike take care of her cuts, thing that he had accomplished only a few times in all the years of marriage they had, and that, apparently, she really hadn't cut over the last three days.
Once we were at our place I also told Whatsername that my wife and I had "cleaned" her room while she was away. She seemed really embarrassed and her cheeks became red, but other than that, there wasn't any kind of emotive reaction, whether it was relief, anger or sadness, she just nodded her head and continued her way into the room. She seemed really emotionless since I picked her up at the airport. I figured that for her cutting might have been also a way of feeling alive, to make that feeling of being numb go away, so I thought it'd go away within a few days, and I paid no more attention to it, so, ignoring the fact that Mike had told me she was really devastated because of all the things that were going on in her life at the moment, I decided not to worry; instead, I just became quite happy about the fact she hadn't just run out the door to go find new blades. "Maybe this time she's decided to stop," is what I thought.
Well, after warning Whatsername that she wouldn't find any blades in her room (hopefully), I headed back to my room where I peacefully continued reading her letter.
Whatsername never brought up anything about the letter, except for a moment when she asked me if I had already got it, but she said nothing else. It was something that was always there, but never mentioned, even though we did share some weird looks after she confirmed that I was already reading the letter.
The next day, Jesus took Whatsername and Jenny, mother and daughter, out for a ride around Oakland and stuff. From what they told me later that day, he took them to a couple of shopping malls, which apparently wasn't such a good idea because both, "M.I." and Jenny hated shopping, and later, after taking them to eat to some nice and kind of fancy place, he took them to the bay.
But it wasn't just any bay.
It was a bay that meant a lot to Jesus. Apparently, even though that in his "reality", Jimmy killed himself in a bay in New York, after he came back to California, he would constantly dream with that episode, and he'd see Jimmy blowing his brains out into that bay. It was always a very lonely area, mostly at that time of the year, so they probably got to see a splendid sunset all by themselves.
And while they were out having fun, I stayed home, reading Whatsername's letter.
Finally, during the morning of December 31st, I finished reading the letter. It was so intense to see how her life had been put upside down over the last few months just because an old lost love had come back into her life. And it also made me feel kind of guilty, since if we hadn't forced her to start a road that would lead her back to him, nothing of what had been taking place during the last few days would have happened. Then I slapped those thoughts from my head, "For god's sake, Billie, she loves him, she would have lived the rest of her life wondering what would happen if she someday decided to reach him and tell him she still loves him and that they had a daughter. What we did was the right thing, and in the end, they'll end up back together and they'll have to thank us!" I thought as I shook my head.
However, she was right.
Even after I had read the entire letter, I still wasn't sure about why she had suddenly decided to tell me the story of her life so far. "Who knows? Maybe she wants a punk-rock opera just about her... "
"Hey, that's actually a good idea, I have enough material here with me to do that...and it'd be a good story..."
Anyways, New Year's Eve party was going to be celebrated at Mike's house.
You just needed to walk inside the living room that night to sense the tension between the guests. Everybody knew what had happened between Whatsername and Jesus at the end of the Christmas party, except for Mary Jane, of course.
Jesus called me an hour after the party was over, telling me that at some point of the night, when Whatsername had been left alone in the kitchen with him, she asked him with some irritation if he was ever going to tell Mary Jane what had happened between them at Tré's house a week ago, and being Jesus under so much pressure already that night, taking care that nobody would get too drunk like to say out loud that he had slept with Whatsername, and trying to act normal around Brian, even though the cop was basically killing him with his look, Whatsername's request just added an amazing pressure to that he already had on his shoulders, so he pretty much lost if and totally freaked out, starting to yell at her to back off and to not pressure him, which led to an argue which he ended by yelling at the green-eyed woman that he wasn't going to tell Mary Jane a damn thing about their one-night stand anymore, not that night, not tomorrow, not ever.
It was just after I got his call that I started to understand her fear of spending the rest of her life lonely. It seemed pretty obvious now, in her mind, she was sure Jesus wasn't going to talk to Mary Jane and that what he promised her would never come truth. Jenny now had also a dad who to visit on weekends, holidays and vacations, and she would turn eighteen soon anyways, seeing as kids grow so fast before our eyes, and then she'd leave for college, work, and eventually, her own family. As far as she was concerned, Brian was, definitely, going to have the custody of their kids, and probably, once they were divorced, Brian would soon find another woman and get married, because he was a really good man, and she probably thought nobody would ever want to marry her or spend the rest of their life with her. In her letter I got to understand that she thought that Brian married her probably just as an act of charity. I planned to talk to Whatsername later that day, after getting some rest, to assure her that Jesus would eventually tell Mary Jane that he had slept with her, even though that, as Whatsername said on her letter, Jesus has his weakness; and exactly because of that he'd end up talking to his wife, simply because he wouldn't be able to live with the fucking guilt for more than a month or two.
Anyways, going back to the party, it must have been around 6am of the January 1st when everyone headed back to their places, and of course that Whatsername, her future ex-husband, her daughter, and theirs two sons came back to my place in my wife's car, which she had lend them while they stayed at our place so they could feel free to move around the bay area.
But I had barely had a few hours of sleep when I woke up at my wife's voice calling me from a side of the bed.
Jenny couldn't find her mom anywhere, and the thirty-three years old woman had left her cellphone in the guestroom of my house where she was staying.
After doing some quick search around the house, even though that in the back of my mind I knew it was useless because Jenny should have looked all around the house already, my wife told me that her car wasn't parked anywhere near the house. I called Mike and Tré, and she wasn't there either. However, the two of them came over to my house, and between some random chatting and a good breakfast, we forgot that she wasn't around, thinking that she probably had gone out to buy something, tampons maybe, who knows? But I thought that, unfortunately, she was probably looking for a store where to find blades, and that might take her sometime, considering that she didn't know the area, and the fact that stores don't put big signs on their windows announcing that they sale blades, not to mention that it was January 1st and most of the population of the area must have been still sleeping after a good New Year's Eve party. Besides, Brian had also told us she likes to go on long walks when she needs to digest something big.
During our conversation I mentioned a little bit about the conversation that Jesus had told me on the phone that he had had with Whatsername at Mike's house, to which Brian commented that if his wife got through this without cutting herself, and by the moment of the divorce she still hadn't hurt herself again, he would tell her that if she definitely stopped self-harming he wouldn't ask for the full custody of Jamie and Jack. I know that Tré, Mike and I felt quite happy about this comment, even though I think we were also kind of worried about what would happen if she came back with some new cuts covering her arms.
But after a long while we started to get worried. Tré and I finally hopped in my car and Mike in his and we started to drive around the area, trying to find my wife's car parked somewhere, or maybe Whatsername herself walking around the bay area. But nothing...
"The bay!"
Of course than just then I remembered that Jenny had told me that Jesus had taken them to that lonely bay he loves and hates at the same time, so we headed there.
"I bet she thought that bay is a great place to go for a walk and clear her mind, it's really lovely and quiet. She must be there."
All I had in mind as I drove there was to find Whatsername, bring her back to my place and give her a comforting hug, then tell her all my thoughts about how Jesus would end up telling Mary Jane about the night they spent together, exactly because of the same reason why she thought he wouldn't: because he has his weakness.
Previous | Page 55/55
