I am ever so grateful I let the boys be boys, even if it ended up with piercings and Michael and Marguerite sneaking away to the beach at night to canoodle. When we returned, no one would ever be the same.
The house was empty, save for Régine who was quietly weeping at the kitchen table. She was drunk, but not dangerously so, though she could not tell us why she was crying. The sight shocked us since Régine rarely showed any sadness, it was always anger.
On a hunch, I went upstairs to the master bedroom and found the room to be emptied. Everything that belonged to Curtis was gone. His clothes, his shoes, his books.
I ran down to his study and it was emptied too. His degrees and certificates, his computer and files, everything had vanished. There was no note, no anything. He just up and left that day and that was the end of it.
Suddenly I knew I was faced with a problem larger than myself. I had inherited a family but I had no money to support them as the breadwinner was gone.
I never knew the reasons why your father left, Declan. I guess we will never know. One can only assume that his image and pride was worth more to him than his family and rather than trying to maintain the cover up, he left it all behind. Maybe he ran away with a mistress, perhaps he was evading the police, loan sharks or taxes. It doesn’t matter. The fact is he was a coward and he left a giant mess behind him.
I reached out to the O’Shea’s family friends, those who had been pushed aside over the years. With their help we got Régine into a treatment center and while she was there, I took care of Michael and Declan off of my own savings. Eventually I called Karl and he agreed to help me, then pleaded for me to go back home. I should have listened and I didn’t.
The truth was, I needed the boys as much as they needed me. But there came to be a time when I couldn’t look after them anymore. The shadowy demon was tormenting me. The pleas and touches in the dark never stopped. Even Declan was affected my actions - I could tell he was sometimes afraid of me and that hurt.
But how silly it sounds to say that for it was foolish of me to worry about my own feelings when it came to the boys. Michael handled it as well as he could and continued to excel at school and football. Declan started getting in fights after class, failing exams and fooling around with older girls from the wrong side of the tracks. He devoted all of his time to music and penning shocking poems that I found scattered about in his room, stuff I wasn’t allowed to see. Though Declan feared his father and was never once close with him, he took Curtis’s abandonment hard. He was an angry, frustrated young man and I could not fault him for it.
Finally, Régine emerged from the treatment center a somewhat new woman. She was prickly, skinny and stern but she was sober. For the time being, at least. She was able to get a job at a call center, which meant not only would my services cease to be needed, but she couldn’t afford me anyway on her new salary. They ended up having the bank foreclose on the house and she and the boys moved to a tiny two bedroom apartment in Brooklyn. Michael was close to graduating so he was able to stay at his school in Manhattan but Declan had to start all over again.
Sadly, this is where my story and Declan’s story part ways. Even after they moved, I still came and visited Declan when I could. I lived in Queens, renting the basement of a young family, surviving on Karl’s generosity, and the journey wasn’t very far. But after some time, as I deteriorated, Ingrid and Daniel came swooping into my life.
It was to my surprise when Ingrid and Daniel paid me a visit one day, showing up at my door unannounced. My small suite was a mess and I knew how it made me look. The dishes weren’t done, there was garbage on the floor and all my favorite books were scattered about, their pages spread open and covers torn off. The dishes and garbage were because I was too tired and depressed to help myself anymore. The tossed books were the actions of a poltergeist that wouldn’t leave me alone, however try explaining that to people.
Oh, maybe I’m kidding myself here. It has been a long time and there are some parts of my life that remain a haze. I am sure my apartment and the way I looked was far worse than I am describing to you. It was bad enough that Daniel insisted they would take care of me. They were now living in his small rented condo in the city and they were engaged to be married.
The next while was a blur. I fell into tough times. I’d react to things no one else could see. I was living in fear, too afraid to let my guard down for one minute, too paranoid to bathe, to eat, to sleep. The lack of sleep was the worst of all and it toyed with my health and sanity. But I couldn’t sleep unless I was forced too – my dreams felt all too real and I was unprotected. I had begun to dream about things that were yet to happen, dreams about being locked away, dreams about being raped by faceless figures, dreams about smashing open a makeup kit, dreams of blood.
I didn’t improve, even with their care, and Ingrid ended up having to give up her modeling job to take care of me. As if that child could not resent me more.
Finally, they had to call Karl and ask for his opinion on what to do with dear old Pippa. He couldn’t come to me, so he insisted I was to go home where I could be given proper medical care. He would be there to love and take care of me while the Swedish mental health system would ensure I was treated properly and respectfully.
That never happened, despite all of our best intentions. We were close; I had the ticket bought for me and had some things packed in my small suitcase. I calmed down in the last few days leading up to my flight, enough that I could feel the overwhelming sense of relief at getting help. Maybe with the right medication, the right people, I would be able to keep the ghosts solely in my nightmares. I was going to miss visiting my dear Declan though and hoped he wouldn’t forget about me.
As such, I couldn’t leave the country for good without saying goodbye to him and perhaps imparting some of the wisdom I had gleaned from Jakob and it was Régine’s I was heading to on the day I fell apart.
I was going to catch the subway and was just about to head down the dirty stairs when I saw a familiar blonde head coming out of a ritzy restaurant.
It was no one other than Ludie and time stood still. I dropped the newspaper I was holding and let it fall absently to my feet. I stared at him enthralled, enraged.