Saving Amy, page 32
I edged closer to the bed and stared at his chest, watching as it struggled to rise and fall. I wasn’t sure what I felt. I wasn’t sure what I should feel. I started to wonder what he was like as a child. What could have happened to make him who he was? Maybe he was just born that way. Could people be born evil?
Accepting that I would probably never find my answers my thoughts moved on to what my life could have been like if he’d have been different – if he’d loved me. Would I be sitting on the edge of his bed right now, crying as I clutched his hand and praying to some higher being for just a little more time with him?
Numb. That’s what I felt. Empty.
I didn’t know why but I felt an overwhelming urge to touch him. It was mainly curiosity I think - wondering what it would feel like for his skin to touch mine, rather than slamming into it, or grabbing it, or twisting it…
Cautiously, I grazed the skin over his knuckles with my thumb. It felt so much softer than I thought it would. I recalled how that same skin felt when it rammed into my face, my ribs or my stomach… It felt so much firmer, so much rougher when it struck you with such speed. My whole body shivered at the unwanted memories and when I felt tears clawing at the back of my eyes I turned to leave, having accomplished nothing.
“Amelia? Is that you?”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My heart stopped. My feet melted into the floor. My stomach churned. Fuck.
“Amelia?” His voice was a hoarse, rasping whisper. Hesitantly, I turned to face him.
“Yes. It’s me.” Fear pooled in my stomach even though I knew he couldn’t hurt me – physically at least.
I waited anxiously for a reply but after a single weak nod I got nothing more. It infuriated me. What does he want? Should I ask him? Should I leave? And then, completely unplanned and out of the blue, my mouth opened in preparation to speak words my brain hadn’t even thought of yet.
“Dad, did you ever love me?”
An intense silence followed and the faint bleeps of the machines pounded like thunder in my ears. I didn’t know if it was because he was thinking or he was dying but his response seemed to take hours.
“I don’t know how to love, Amelia,” he croaked, never opening his eyes.
The words scraped at my heart, ripping it to shreds. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel responsible. It wasn’t me – I didn’t push him too far or not try hard enough to be a good girl. I wasn’t such a bad kid that I made it impossible for him to love me… It was him. It was always him. He was broken…
I closed my burning eyes in an effort to stem the river of tears. But as I did the machines surrounding my dad roared to life, flashing and buzzing to their own raucous melody. Seconds later a swarm of white coats and blue scrubs burst into the room, shouting unintelligible medical terminology and flocking towards my dad’s bed like flies on shit.
A man in a blue scrubs pulled a lever which instantly flattened my dad’s bed with an almighty crash and then he tipped my dad’s head back and prized his mouth open.
“You need to wait outside,” a woman who I didn’t bother to look at said to me, nudging me towards the door. I did as I was told, pausing at the door to take one last look at my dad as his wretched life slipped away from him– knowing it would be the last time I ever did. Then I heaved open the double doors and flew into Richard’s arms.
We didn’t speak. Richard brought me into his chest and cradled my head against his shoulder. I could feel his heartbeat fluttering against my chest, just as fast and erratic as mine. There were muffled voices and machines singing behind the door of my dad’s room… and then it fell silent.
This is it. He’s dead. My father is dead.
The heavy green door squealed in protest as it scraped open against the floor. I eased myself out of Richard’s grasp and shot my gaze towards a man in a white overcoat who had just stepped out.
“Simon?” Richard said, speaking the doctor’s name like it was a question. The doctor – Simon – shook his head, bowing it slightly, respectfully.
I let out an involuntary gasp and threw my hand over my mouth.
“I’m very sorry,” Simon said automatically and then disappeared down the corridor.
I felt… devastated. And I hated myself for it. Tears sprung from my eyes, washing over the fresh bruises inflicted by the man I was mourning for. I rubbed frantically at my cheeks, trying to wipe away the tears before they even fell.
“It’s okay, Amy. Everything’s okay,” Richard whispered as he attempted to wrap his arms around me. I batted them away with my tear soaked hands.
“It’s not okay!” I snapped. “That man has destroyed my life. He stole my childhood. He tortured me until I didn’t want to live anymore. And now he’s dead and I’m upset! I’m actually fucking sad because he’s dead! How is that okay?”
I was full on hysterical. My chest was tight. My pulse racing. I couldn’t breathe…
“I should be happy for Christ’s sake! Why am I not pleased? Why can’t I hate him? Richard, I need to hate him!” I yelled, draining my lungs of their last drop of air. I heaved my chest up and down but I couldn’t drag in enough oxygen. I felt like I was drowning.
“Shh, shh, baby, you need to calm down. Breathe, Amy. Just breathe.” Richard had his hands on my shoulders. He was speaking but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t breathe. I was choking.
“Fucking breathe, Amy!” he roared straight into my face, shaking hell out of my shoulders. My body jolted upright and I clutched my pounding chest as air finally crashed into my lungs. “Good girl.”
He snaked one arm around my waist and one around my neck, cradling me. I didn’t resist this time. I let my weak, weary body collapse into his arms and as much as I despised my tears, I set them free – letting them soak into Richard’s shirt until there were none left to shed.
**********
The human mind is an amazing thing. Just when you think it’s ran out of room, when you start to worry it might physically burst under the pressure, it surprises you by squeezing in just a little more. A little more pain, a little more fear, a little more heartache, confusion, love, hatred… Or maybe that’s just my mind.
My head was fucked. My body wasn’t too far off either. It was covered in bumpy, hideous scars, scratches and bruises. It was disgusting. I was disgusting. That was down to me as much as my father. We’d both hacked and punched away at my body in equal measures until it became what it was today. Maybe that was why I was struggling to hate him – because deep down, I knew I was no better.
Richard was lying next to me in bed. He shifted onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow and trailing his thumb along my cheek.
“You’re crying,” he noted.
Am I?
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” I squinted my eyes towards the bedside clock. It was 03:47 in the morning. I hadn’t been to sleep yet.
“I wish I could help you.”
He buried his head in my shoulder. His expression was painful to witness. He was so worried about me – it broke my heart. I wanted something to be able to help me too. I wanted something to slice into my brain and cut away all the badness, all the hurt, all the anger… But nothing could help me. The only thing that’d ever been able to help me was… lying right next to me. The realisation struck me like lightning.
Richard… I needed Richard.
I rolled myself onto my side and hitched one leg over Richard’s hips, pulling myself up on his shoulders so I was straddling him. I took his angst-ridden face in my hands and brushed his lips with mine. Prizing his lips apart with my tongue, I deepened the kiss… exploring him, tasting him, kissing our pain away.
I worked my way down his body, kissing his cheeks, his neck, his torso – his involuntary groans intensifying my desire to be with him.
“Amy, stop,” he breathed, lifting my head from his chest. “What are you doing? I can’t make love to you like this. You’re exhausted. You’re hurting. You’re-” I silenced him by placing a finger over his lips.
“Please, Richard. I need this. I need you,” I whispered as I returned my lips to his bare chest.
I need you to take it all away…
I trailed my hand down his chest, along the defined muscles hugging his hips and then into the waistband of his sweatpants. He didn’t resist as I reached inside and felt him growing between my fingers. He wanted this. He wanted me.
Richard grabbed me by the waist and flipped me onto my back, slipping his fingers under the hem of my purple satin nightdress. Instinctively I raised my arms above my head and he slid it off me, following its path with kisses – frantic, passionate, demanding kisses. His touch made my entire body quiver and every hair stood to attention. My heart was racing so fast it was only just not frightening.
I arched my back, pressing myself into him as he kissed along my neck, his deep craving groans vibrating against my skin. His hands wandered to my breasts, cupping them, stroking them, and then he brought his head down letting his tongue take their place. I gasped as his fingers trailed across my overly sensitised skin and down into my panties. Slowly, tantalisingly, he peeled them off, sliding them down my legs and tossing them onto the floor behind him. Then he paused at the foot of the bed to remove his own pants and my body was left alone and helpless, writhing with desire and need.
As he slid himself back up onto the bed my hips started to thrust against him – wanton and desperate, craving the feel of him. Lowering himself on top of me, he tucked one hand behind the base of my neck, lifting my head to meet his lips. He kissed me fervently, his tongue delving into my mouth and entwining with mine. His fingers were teasing me, twisting and circling my nipples. Then he glided his smooth fingers down my body, being extra gentle as he caressed my bruised ribs.
I moaned when he slipped two fingers inside me, sliding them in and out, circling them, teasing me, torturing me… Then he ripped them abruptly out of me, making my breath hitch and my body shiver. But before I had chance to plead for more he nestled himself between my legs and slammed into me. My back arched and my hips matched his slow, tantalising rhythm.
“You’re amazing, Amy,” he whispered through gritted teeth, his hungry green eyes penetrating mine. “So strong. So beautiful.”
My fingers clawed at the back of his neck, kneading beads of his sweat into his skin. As he picked up his pace he kissed me hard – my lips, my cheeks, my breasts… His body moved faster. His kisses grew harder. My body began to tighten around him – pleasure, heat, need, building up inside me, intensifying with every delicious thrust.
“I love you,” Richard breathed and his words tipped me over the edge. I cried out loudly, screaming his name as my legs tightened their grip around his waist. With one last thrust, one hard, determined thrust, he breathed my name and poured himself into me – his body juddering until it stilled altogether. “So much,” he whispered as he let his body collapse onto mine.
And as if by magic, all the anguish, the hurt, the need to hate… melted away. For now at least.
**********
It’d been a week since my dad died. Today was his funeral and I decided to attend literally five minutes ago. I felt like I needed to see it through to the end. I needed… closure. I hadn’t told Richard and I didn’t plan to either – at least not until it was over. It took me three days to persuade him to go back to work, to convince him that I could cope. So I wasn’t about to call him and tell him that I couldn’t.
I was just about ready to leave. I was hardly dressed for the occasion in my black jeans and Richard’s grey hoody, but that didn’t matter because I wasn’t planning on letting anyone see me. After heading to the bathroom and scraping my wayward hair back into a ponytail, I slipped on my black pumps, grabbed the keys to the Audi and left.
I pulled up outside the church, trying but failing to remember a single time my dad visited church while he was alive. Then, after a few long minutes arguing with my subconscious about whether to turn around, I stuck to my guns and stepped out onto the gravel. I pulled my hair down to conceal my face as I weaved through a fairly large gathering of people dressed in black from head to toe.
The possibilities were slim seeing as my dad never introduced me to anyone but still I kept my head down in an effort to go unrecognised. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to listen to anyone offer their condolences without screaming what a violent monster he was. When I reached a cluster of evergreen shrubs I tucked myself behind them while I waited for everyone to head inside. The sick bastard had received quite an impressive turnout. It made my stomach churn.
I watched the mourners curiously, studying their serious faces, their tears, their sadness. I didn’t recognise anyone therefore I doubted they’d recognise me, so I hesitantly edged my way nearer to the crowd grieving for the man they thought they knew. My ears pricked up at the sound of tyres crunching the gravel and the mourners slowly dispersed to the edges of the church grounds.
“He’s here. Jimmy boy’s here,” I heard someone say.
I looked behind me and saw the scattering people making room for the hearse. I threw my hand against my mouth, fearing that I might throw up when it drove unnervingly slowly past me. Sprays of white lilies shrouded the dark wood coffin and flowers arranged into the name ‘JIM’ lined the horizontal window. I started to wonder who arranged all this – who would care enough? My mom perhaps? But then I remembered she’d not been in a state fit enough to tie her own shoelaces for as long as I could remember. Instinctively my eyes scanned the swarm of people closing in on the hearse in search of her, even though I knew in reality she wouldn’t be able to drag herself away from her bottle of gin long enough to come.
The crowd merged into a line and slowly followed the four pallbearers dressed in black top hats and tailcoats who were carrying my dad’s casket into the arched, medieval looking doors. I didn’t join the line. I didn’t come here to listen to prayers and speeches about what a wonderful man he was. I came to watch him being lowered into the ground, to watch him be buried beneath the earth where he couldn’t hurt me anymore.
While the service was in motion I headed back to the car and began the short journey to Lake View Cemetery. When I arrived I took myself off to mine and Julie’s bench, scraping the dirt beneath my feet and reminiscing about all our skipping school antics. I only ever remembered being happy when I was sat here, secluded from the cruel world which lingered on the other side of the trees. But now he’d taken that from me too. I would never be happy here again knowing my dad was rotting just a few yards away.
I jumped to my feet when I saw a hearse approaching in the distance. It stopped smoothly beside the war memorial and before long the swarm of mourners were slowly closing in on it. The short balding priest came into view first, followed by the pallbearers and my dad, with the sea of black trailing dolefully behind them. I waited for them to reach the mound of freshly dug dirt a few headstones away before moving forward. Gradually I inched myself nearer to them, periodically pausing and pretending to read the headstones as I tried not to draw attention to myself.
I was soon standing behind a sniffling woman dabbing her heavily mascaraed eyes with a pink tissue. I swear it took all my inner strength not to slap the truth into her. I noticed thick black velvet ropes resting underneath the coffin… resting under him. The four pallbearers bent in unison to pick up an end each and then they lifted him effortlessly, suspending him above the deep hole lined with green felt before gracefully lowering him into it – all the while the priest talked away with his hands offered up to the sky.
“I’m surprised his wife isn’t here,” I heard a tall man with snow white hair whispered into a plump, brown-haired mans ear in front of me.
“Well, from what I’ve heard she likes a drink or twenty, if you get what I mean,” he whispered back, moulding his hand into the shape of a glass and gesturing it towards his mouth.
“Wow. Poor bastard going home to that every night, huh? No wonder he started going downhill.” They nodded at one another and I almost choked trying to stifle a humourless laugh. “That must be where his daughter’s at… taking care of her.”
The ignorant man’s words struck a chord inside my heart and I stumbled backwards. Should I be taking care of her? There was sure as hell no one else who would. She’d not stepped beyond the front door in years and I started to wonder - worry even - if she’d managed to buy food since he died – if she’d eaten, if she’d showered… Then I started to wonder why I even cared.
The priest gave a little speech which I didn’t listen to, made the sign of the cross and then passed a box of dirt into the crowd of mourners. One by one people scooped a handful of earth from the little wooden box and tossed it on top of my father before making their own sign of the cross.
‘Good riddance’ I muttered under my breath but I wasn’t convinced I actually meant it.
**********
I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom during the drive home. I didn’t want to think about her. I didn’t want to care about her. But I did… and it was confusing the hell out of me. The idea of paying her a visit turned over and over in my mind. Eventually I decided that I absolutely, definitely would not go and see her.
Then I change my mind…
I convinced myself I didn’t have to help her or form any kind of relationship. But maybe I could finally get some answers now she didn’t have to worry about the ramifications from my dad. I’d had questions burning holes in the back of my head for so long I’d persuaded myself I didn’t need the answers – that they were irrelevant. They wouldn’t change anything after all. But maybe I’d never be able to move on without them. Maybe I’d always be fucked-up if I didn’t ask them.
I wanted to know how she felt when she found out she was pregnant. Was she happy or was I a mistake from the start? Did she ever love me? Why did she allow me to suffer at the hands of my father? Why didn’t she at least try to stop him? Or whisk me away somewhere he could never find us? Did she hate me that much?
