Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:59:58 -0500 (EST) From: Karla Schulz Subject: Damage Deposit (Chapter One) MOAR! Chapters in this story are fairly short, so I honest to god promise to post fairly frequently. Thanks for reading! Chapter one; the way we get by (Carrots) It either happens exactly like you'd expect or nothing like it at all, depending on who you are, how you look at it. I imagined we'd fall apart, cease to be, shrink deeper and deeper into the same dark hole until we imploded into ourselves. It would be that, an inability to escape compounded till inevitable oblivion, or it would be another way -- but still the result would be the same. My nightmare scenario (as usual, the one I thought most likely to occur) featured aunts and other equally strange and distant (in any sense that mattered) relatives converging on our house for the funeral, or possibly, even more likely, before, first taking over the arrangements and then our lives, dividing our possessions, memories and finally ourselves, among them. Kyle and I would be possibly immune, safe from this fate due to our legal standing as adults -- but the twins and Kara, especially Kara -- would be too young to defend themselves, and although we would put up a struggle, hire lawyers and consider purchasing firearms, we would lose in the end -- and then would be taken from us. Separated. This was what I was expecting all along, it was what I was constantly preparing myself for -- our midnight getaway -- miraculously in the confines of the Le Baron, room for all seven of us, fear of cars momentarily conquered and a few of our carefully (but quickly) selected most valued possessions. I quietly resented Kyle for being busy struggling to deal with the mysteries of The Will and other official business, when I felt he should be helping me plan our great escape. But, of course, as it turned out, no escape would be necessary, my elaborate mental diagrams, my map consultations, my obsessive guarding of the phone, my patrols of the first floor windows, always on the watch for invaders, interlopers of any kind, all for naught. As I should have suspected, and of course would have known if I'd been operating with anything like a sound mind at the time, was that while I was formulating deranged plans, Kyle was steadily and courageously protecting our family (what was left of our family). And of course my parents, who were never fools and were never mistaken when it came to understanding the nature of their children, of me, had ensured we would meet no such fate, had made clear, in their will and various other legal documents, that there would be only one person to whom we would be entrusted, the only one each of us had always known we could count on. So while I was frantically attempting to shore up our defenses and find a way we'd all fit in the Le Baron, Kyle was talking to our family lawyer (something I didn't know we had until he appeared at the door the day after our parents died, and Kyle let him in saying, "Good morning, Mister Shepard") and signing things, and having interviews with counselors and civil servants, being prodded and questioned, all to keep us with him, keep us together, keep us safe. Taking on, legally and bindingly, the mantle of responsibility, the weight of our little world, all that which he had already carried on his shoulders as his self-understood birthright from the very start. And I was, as I typically have been, a complete wash when it came to helping him in any way. I'm trying to make it up to him now, in what I refer to in my head as our rebuilding stage, not that he would ever consider I have anything to make up for, and not that my efforts actually amount to much. But I sit with him sometimes, late at night at the kitchen table, as he holds his head in his hands and lets out what he won't in the light of day even acknowledge he's holding in, never in front of Kara or the twins. It's not that I'm any good when it comes to being a rock for him to lean on, but in those moments I know at least that I am myself not adding to the weight he has allowed to be thrust permanently onto his shoulders, that he can take a few minutes, now and then, to set that weight down on the table in front of us, and we can ignore it together, and when his shoulders shake I can offer him my hand, and grip it tightly, until his breathing slows and evens. It's always strange, so strange, to sit with him and watch him stop, for only a few minutes, fighting what I know now is a ever constant battle to fight back tears, when before this I had never seen Kyle cry, and even stranger, when I, who used to cry almost at the drop of a hat, whenever sadness or frustrations snuck up on me as it so often did, have not shed a single tear. At first it made sense, this total lack of grief, of letting in or recognition of such a weak emotion, in those early days when I allowed myself to be consumed with paranoia, with a brittle and constantly vigilant defensiveness. Certainly, undoubtedly, I was repressing, transferring this pain, it was all about something else. But then Kyle strode in and the threat was eliminated, and still I didn't cry. I waited for the residual mindless panic to pass, and slowly over the weeks it did, but no tears came. It wasn't that I felt nothing, or even that I wasn't often overcome with sadness, with rage, all those things one is taught to associate with loss, with death, but it was as though I couldn't feel it for myself, about myself, my loss. It was somehow all too far away, or foreign. I burned with fury at the universe every time I looked at Kara, every time I thought about the events which had irrevocably deprived my tiny perfect sister of her mother, who always seemed to be her whole world. My hands clenched into fists every time I passed the twins door, closed and locked, as it was for so long (too long!) after their death. I could barely stand to look Kyle in the eye, to see the emptiness and pain there, with no way to put the strong, steady light I depended on my whole life back in them. I wanted to die for them, kill for them, but I felt nothing for myself. It's necessary to emphasize that I don't mean that in the selfless way it might sound -- instead those feelings came from a very different, much more horrific place. The reality I had to face -- was violently forced to face, finally in the wreckage their deaths left behind, was how very little I thought of or relied on my parents when they were alive. I loved them, yes, and was grateful for them, for a myriad of reasons, and more that that too, I admired them, liked them. My mom's dry wit, her ageless beauty, my father's deep abiding calm, his endless patience and understanding. And I looked to them as a guide, a template when it came to trusting in the strength of their love for each other, of letting that love be the thing they built their entire life around. But maybe in understanding them like that, in learning from it, making it my gospel already at the age of six, I lost something, severed the connection too soon. If it's something else, something worse, I don't know what it is, can't make my mind look at it. Whatever the reason, I can't make myself feel the loss the way the others do, can't access the pain so as to work through it. I can only do what I've always done -- cling to Kyle and Celery, make jokes at increasingly inappropriate times and lapse into the quoting of out-of-context movie lines and song lyrics in lieu of actually saying anything of relevance or value. Celery, despite losing the closest thing to parents he ever had, was and is predictably preoccupied with my needs, my pain, and thus has done little self-directed grieving of his own. Instead he watches the movies I suggest, and finds ways to quietly calm me down when I threaten to veer back off into mania, smiles at my jokes, and holds my hand. There was no time after we got back to worry about whether everything was okay with us, and since then we have pulled off the greatest trick there is -- wishing has made it so. What was necessarily assumed to be true has been transformed by time and dedication into reality, and I can only shake my head in baffled wonderment at a me who doubted the most reliable thing in my life. The love he has for me has returned to the effortless, unconcerned comfort it existed in before, and I could doubt the sun will rise with more ease than I could imagine he could stop loving me. And I hope, I think, that I have been able to do the same for him, to restore the total faith he has in me, if the strength of his hand in mine and the clear blue in his eyes is any indication. The twins and Kara present their own sets of complications, existing before our parents' death and only exacerbated now. Lately though, and largely through Kyle and Braden's dedication, the twins have been leaving their room more, have been seen both outside and throughout the house, have even begun inviting or allowing Braden inside their room once more. Braden is permitted because he understands, because he knows the score. Both of what it is like to lose a parent (his father died when he was nine) but also of the twins generally, a mystery 15 years in the same house has barely given me any clues to decipher. Kara seems often exactly the same, existing as she did before, in the small nooks and crannies of our house, silently, unobtrusively. But she used to sparkle and she used to laugh, she used to rush Celery when he came through a door, she used to bring home plants and animals for us all to admire, and she has lost the innocence, the levity I once imagined her life had. She is solemn, but so strong, so good. She knows to climb on Celery's lap when she has to cry, to have her hair gently stroked, and she knows to smile bravely when Kyle looks at her, hopeless and bereft, unable, as I am, to bear the thought of any pain (never mind this pain, greater than any of us) encroaching on the charmed life we always felt she deserved. Jonas is gone, and beyond this, will not be spoken of. He lacked the strength and fortitude to weather another storm of this magnitude, to live once more through the kind of loss which strips a family of all sense and meaning, and chose, although that may not be the appropriate word, to flee back to the dubious safety of his parents, that relatively unchanging and cosseted world. Kyle, as he has always seemed infinitely capable of this, particularly when it came to Jonas's insufficiencies, claims to have understood, and has in his way, forgiven him, but at the same time, understands that I cannot, that we cannot, and so we no longer speak of him, and do not think about reaching out. He has not been back, not since he came in, and found us after the news had, and knelt for a moment at Kyle's feet, lingering only long enough to hold both Kyle's hands in his and kiss them, to whisper something in his ear, and then was gone. He did not come to the funeral, the last chance he might have been given, and so is considered irrevocably gone. In some ways, this loss, so unexpected, mixed with the brutality of a conscious betrayal, burns more deeply than that of our parents. At least for me, and I know for the twins also. It is the one thing left that unites us, that will keep us strong and together. And as he has always protected us, we are now fiercely protective of Kyle, so close now at all times to breaking, even as he is stronger than any of us. We would kill Jonas if we saw him on the street, for Kyle, and for ourselves, for the way he took himself from Kyle, from us. As I sometimes predicted but not as I feared, we have become even more insular, moving closer together and tightening all ranks. The only outsider that is permitted is Braden, and we are moving towards his further inclusion into the fold, so that he will no longer bring a hint of the outside world in with him as he sometimes does now. Kara has stopped going to Sue's, although not actively encouraged, this behavior is not prevented or questioned. She plays silently in our backyard now when she leaves the house at all, hiding for hours in the leafy green bushes we have not gotten around to trimming this year. The twins have taken to singing randomly and quietly to each other. No one really feels up to asking them why. One afternoon it's the same one line from that moment in About A Boy when Marcus is in school and he doesn't realize he's singing aloud. They kept at it all day. Whenever I saw them, they were sharing significant glances and singing "hanging around, nothing to do but frown, rainy days and Mondays always get me down" back and forth to each other. It was about as disturbing as it sounds. I couldn't decide if it would have made me feel better if it had actually been a Monday. I kind of don't think it would have. Braden watches them carefully, like he does, and occasionally bullies them into saying words. Kyle and I have mostly given up trying to provide any sort of solace or support for them, finding Braden far more equal to the task, and a lot less likely to get punched for trying. That said, it is not completely a wash between us. They and Celery and I remain united in our guard of Kyle, and when smiles can be coaxed out, they are willing to share them with us, and sometimes we are even the cause of them. And other times I know, when Braden is not around and things are actually Bad again, they go to Kyle, as well they should? because he never did anything to them, expect maybe love me more, something I have certainly never deserved, and he sits between them and holds their faces to his chest and pretends not to notice they're crying. All in all though, those times are happening less and less now, and the smiles are more frequent instead. Kara is talking more, and even when she's not, she is more likely to sit among us instead of at the top of the stairs or in a remote corner of the room. It's been nearly three months since our parents' death, and though we are nothing like we were before, we are slowly realizing that we never will be, and are beginning to try to form something new instead. Only weeks after they were gone, as he had begun and continues to do, Kyle called a family meeting in the living room to discuss the future of our living situation, something I was at the time only recently able tolerate without having a panic attack, as the news had come down with some finality that we would all be allowed to remain together. The most pressing issue he put forward was the question of whether or not to remain in our family home, to live in and among the memories that resided there, or to move on, to make our lives somewhere new. Predictably, the idea terrified and appalled me. "We can't just leave. This is our home. Everything that matters happened here." Somehow, I think, I managed to get this out without sounding completely hysterical. It was a big thing for me at the time. It kind of still is actually. "I know, and I think you're probably right," Kyle said softly. "I just thought we should consider it. I mean, we wouldn't have to go far, and we wouldn't even necessarily have to sell it, especially not right away. We have the money from the insurance, from the bakery, as far as that goes. The point is, we don't HAVE to stay here, and we don't have to move. Whatever everybody wants." There was silence for awhile, as we digested this, let ourselves be calmed by his steady words. "If we don't leave now," Jon began, and then paused, thinking over his words carefully, and then Dave finished, as though the thinking Jon had done had been transferred and properly formulated in his own brain, "We'll never leave." It might sound dramatic, but it struck me as he said it that Dave was probably exactly right, and what's more, that that was exactly why the idea of staying appealed to me so much. I was about to say just that, but even before I got the chance, the reality of it seemed to dawn on the rest of the group, and suddenly everyone was nodding, grimly, but with determination. When no one else spoke, Kyle nodded once more, with finality. "Alright then, so that's what we'll do. I've checked in, and the mortgage was paid off several years ago, so there's no problem there, and as far as the rest of the bills go, I'll speak to Mr. Sheppard about setting up a system of payment for that." The silent understanding, established in previous family meetings, was that around the time Kyle started referencing Mr. Shepard and the handling of financial matters, it was pretty much code for "meeting adjourned" and so not long after that we dispersed, going our separate, but not too distant, ways. And so we have continued on in much the same way, these past weeks and months. We find time for happiness and comfort when we can, and keep our breathing mostly steady, secure in the knowledge that, if nothing else, we will always have each other.