Shadowed Soul Page 5

  I finished telling my Donatello story to Beth’s family. I had not mentioned the Shadowed Soul, but everyone knew what had happened to my dad. And they probably had a pretty clear idea why my mom had been so sad that day. When she never showed for our wedding or any other family invitation, it was clear that whatever had happened when I was little, my mother’s sadness had gradually turned into a resentful silence that had been leveled at me throughout the rest of my life. Beth’s family had simply smiled and shared in the joy that I had felt the day I procured Donatello.

  “What happened to Jake? Is his store still open?” asked Beth.

  “Unfortunately, Jake died a couple years later.” I shrugged and looked at the baby.

  Jake McKenzie had been shot dead by Frank Lombardi, who had been shown the same gruff kindness by Jake as every kid, a guy who lived on the same block as us. Frank went into the store one night before closing and pulled a gun on Jake. He had shot the big man in the chest twice, once in the throat and in the head. Rumors went around that Lombardi was a mafia wise guy and that Jake was a stool pigeon. But the more likely truth of the matter was far simpler. Lombardi had shot Jake for the contents of the cash register and seven packets of cigarettes: A decent man’s life in exchange for three-hundred bucks and some smokes. The Shadowed Soul got a further hook into my life on that night. However, I never told Beth, Pete and Dorothy of the senseless drama surrounding Jake’s death. It was too painful to retell and my son deserved to be in a room with happier memories.

  We talked till Jonathan needed a new diaper then Dorothy ushered Pete out, sensing that we needed time in our own little family.

  “Pete and I have errands,” said Dorothy with a wink.

  We sat together on the couch, Jonathan in Beth’s arms, Beth in my arms. Soothing quiet engulfed us. Our hearts beat as one, we were a family unit, for the moment, an impervious wall to the Shadowed Soul.

  “He’s so tiny,” I whispered, touching Jonathan’s hand.

  “I know, it’s scary, isn’t it?” Beth leaned into me. “He’s so vulnerable.”

  “He’s so cute,” I said proudly.

  “Good thing,” said Beth. “At this point, being adorable is his only self-defense. I wonder what he’ll be when he grows up.”

  “Astronaut or superhero,” I said and smiled admiring our son.

  “Not the President then?”

  “Yeah, he’ll be the super hero astronaut president of the United States.” Beth giggled and Jonathan frowned with a gas bubble, his tiny arms flexing randomly as he got used to the functions of his new body.

  “I just want him to be happy,” said Beth quietly.

  “He will be,” I paused. “He’s got us to make sure of that.” And when I said that, I meant it. I was so hopeful that whatever I had been in the past would melt away and that having this tiny being as my lodestar I was destined to remain on the right path.

  Exhausted, we watched our son sleep. Then Beth said something that reminded me of the practical reality of my life.

  “Bailey is going to love him isn’t he? Will you bring him here around tomorrow?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  That night, I returned to Bailey who was eager to be walked and fed. Beth remained with Jonathan at her parents’. Much as I had tried to stay calm, the Shadowed Soul had joined me on the bus as I drew closer to home.

  “Well, Thomas, she really wants her dog back,” said the Shadowed Soul smugly. “She wants to get her entire life away from that dump heap of yours as quickly as she can, doesn’t she? I don’t think she’s ever coming back. Suppose it’s just you and me from now on, buddy, the old team back together again.”

  “Piss off,” I muttered angrily. An old lady seated across from me glanced up then avoided eye contact with me. After a couple moments, she found herself a new seat that had opened up at the far end.

  And even though I blocked out his virulent insinuations I could not help but believe what my longest companion in life was telling me. In my opinion, well, the opinion given to me by my tormentor, Beth had not really fought to stay with me at our apartment. Her real home was with me, yet she had accepted her parents’ offer with an unseemly speed.

  “If it feels like betrayal, Thomas, it probably is,” noted the Shadowed Soul scratching his back side.

  “Jonathan is my son, my flesh and blood and the idea of my son staying in a house with Beth, Pete and Dorothy is bad enough but now she’s taking my best friend away. Bailey’s my fucking friend.” I heard myself whispering angrily.

  “That’s right, Thomas, she just wants to take everything you need. Now you’re getting’ it.”

  “How could she do that to me?”

  “Oh, she’s just a beesh,” snickered the Shadowed Soul.

  I got off the bus and marched to my shitty little apartment and threw open the doors. Bailey immediately raced over wagging his tail, his big tongue lolling. I avoided his greeting. Brushing his torso and shoulder with my leg, I entered the kitchen. I needed something but had no idea what it was I was looking for. Coffee? Beer? What the hell was it I wanted? Grimacing, I looked inside the fridge; there were a few cans of soda and I briefly considered opening one but I didn’t want one. I slammed the door so hard Beth’s favourite magnet fell to the floor: Las Vegas.

  “Gaudy piece of crap,” I hissed in short, angry breaths. I gazed around the kitchen. “Nothing here I want.” I turned to see Bailey gazing perplexedly from the doorway. As I approached him, his ears perked up. But he was leaving me tomorrow and I wanted nothing to do with him. I barged past him, ignoring his plaintive eyes and I stormed through to my living room.

  “It’s mine now, not hers –mine!” I looked around the room and noticed some of Beth’s stuff. “If she wants Bailey back tomorrow, I’ll take her crap with me, too.”

  My tantrum continued. I dashed back to the kitchen for a garbage bag and stuffed it full. It would be easier not to see reminders of Beth. The Shadowed Soul blocked my mind from the fact that Beth was still exhausted from the physical drain of having carried a child for nine months, followed by 37 hours of serious labor whose punch line was a surgery that forever altered her abdominal wall. Recovering from her Caesarean section, enduring severe pain with each movement, Beth had also refused pain killers and sleep aids in order to nurse Jonathan drug-free. All the while her sleep was interrupted every two hours to nurse our son or change a diaper. And yet, my Shadowed Soul had me convinced that I was the one being inconvenienced here.

  “It’s all crap,” I snorted, flicking through TV channels. Cops, spaceships, reality shows about over-eaters, and yet I gazed at the screen. “What a bunch of shit!”

  Bored or thirsty, I wanted a soda. I brushed past Bailey again on my way to the fridge, Beth’s magnet cracking underfoot. I popped the can and drew hard. I tasted nothing. Bubbles burned my throat.

  “Crap soda!” I yelled slamming the can in the sink. A breakfast dish cracked. I did not care. Alone and helpless, maniacal thoughts flooded my mind. My tears gushed suddenly, I was out of control. Strength left my legs and I sank to the floor, my back against the fridge. So racked by sorrow, I did not notice how I cut my hand. Blood on the floor tile tainted three chunks of broken plastic. Vegas.

  “Fuck!” I had broken Beth’s fridge magnet. This sent a new wave of grief through me. With each breath, more tears. I rolled onto my side sobbing, gripping the pieces of Beth’s Vegas in my bleeding hands.

  I needed my wife here with me. I couldn’t cope without Beth and Jonathan. And, now that Bailey was leaving me I didn’t know what I could do to stave off the advances of the Shadowed Soul. My loneliness consumed me. My bloodied hands clutched at my hair as sadness and grief consumed me.

  As always, my loyal friend came to me.

  Bailey’s big friendly face nuzzled my hands, his nose sniffing out emotions that mummified me. Licking the trails of salty tears, Bailey lay down on the floor and I wrapped my arms around his reliable neck, my face finding comfort in the silky fur. His warm
th anaesthetised my sadness. He waited patiently as I wept.

  Reclaiming my composure, I sat up and patted Bailey.

  “Good dog,” I murmured.

  Although I was completely wiped out, I got it together long enough to get off the floor. Together Bailey and I went to the couch and stared at a meaningless television screen. Bailey sat beside me, allowing me to stroke his head.

  “Maybe this won’t be too bad, Bailey,” I said. “I mean logically, it’s best for everyone. Beth and Jonathan and you in the same place, all safe and secure. Then I can find a way to deal with Fuck Head once and for all.” I needed time to finally banish the Shadowed Soul from my life and I couldn’t do that with the distractions of a baby in the house. It was a haul to visit Beth but it was not like they were moving away. I could see them every day if I wanted to. I would be more than fine. It meant that in the times between work and visiting I could finally get around to the things that I had not been able to do yet.

  The room seemed to brighten and I felt good. I was much stronger than my Shadowed Soul. He was merely an imaginary construct whom I had invented to explain away my childhood pains. I knew that there was some physiological reasoning behind my depressions but it was not down to some sinister magic figure. I could get beyond it. Although I had not managed too well in the past, I had never had the proper time or motivation to beat it before. It was different now; I had a son and I suddenly had the time.

  Bailey, sensing that I was calm now, stretched out in his favourite spot. Before closing his eyes, Bailey looked at me for a long moment as if to say, “You okay now, man?”

  “I’m okay, Bailey,” I assured him and got up to give him a pat. Content with my answer, he stretched out on his side. I watched him till he fell asleep.

  “Good dog,” I whispered as he twitched chasing rabbits in his sleep. “You’re going to love being with Beth and Jonathan.” Knowing Bailey would protect Jonathan more than Pete ever could allowed me to relax further. Bailey’s soul had no complications. If he loved then that was what he did forever. There was no jealousy, no anger, just steady, generous love.

  Relaxed and happy now, I felt everything was going to be fine and all the world was going to be right and as it should be. My son was going to grow up knowing that he was loved and that the people who were responsible for him were strong and secure. He would not be subjected to the sadness and cold distance that had been my childhood and adolescence. I understood why my mom was the way she was; I could forgive her attitude. But when my depression had begun my mother had been no help whatsoever.

  Instead, she tried to convince me that it was nothing more than puberty or teenage angst. Even in the grips of my darkest episodes she shrugged it off. If I tried to remember the last time my mother hugged me, then I would recall incidents prior to that magical day gruff old Jake gave me Donatello. When, at age eleven, fate plunged me into a pool of unrelenting chaos, all my mother did was ignore me. Sure, she fed me and got me out the door to school, but she never engaged. As I struggled with feeling disempowered, she watched her soap operas with a cigarette in one hand and a Bombay in the other.

  As I grew older I found I could no more rely on her help than I could on the super heroes in my childhood collection. My mother was a distant, craggy constant that provided no assistance as the Shadowed Soul grew more insidious. My teenage years were a roller-coaster replete with dizzying heights of joy followed by disorientating descents into misery and gloom. Throughout, my mother remained fossilized in disinterest. I had tried to fight my condition when I was young, but I had neither the strength nor the experience to shape the moods and depressions that plagued me.

  Had it not been for my English teacher, Miss Alaniz and her keen interest in my development, I might never have known that I was bi-polar. Miss Alaniz was one of the most beautiful people I had ever met, not just physically but emotionally. She cared about all of her students and offered support I needed. My mom had resented my teacher’s care, lamenting, after three Bombays, that I didn’t need some Latina slut interfering in my life. I hated my mom when she said those things about Miss Alaniz. At least my teacher could mobilize her care in a way that the emotionally inert woman who had given birth to me could never muster.

  When I left school, Miss Alaniz transferred to another state with her boyfriend, and lives somewhere in Kansas as Mrs. Sullivan. Rather than being sad at the time I had felt joy, a deep and unshakeable happiness borne from the fact that she had found someone to love her. I admit I also felt a certain relief she was no longer in a school I passed every day. It would have been difficult to be barred by age from going in and seeing her. She had been an emotional crutch at a time when I needed it but now that period had passed. I moved on.

  At fifteen and sixteen I had a crush on her. It was powerful emotions tied up with mood swings. At times I would fantasize about her rescuing me from the Shadowed Soul and at other times I would imagine that I was saving her from the ravaging beast that lived within me. Of course at my lowest I knew that she would never see me as anything other than a child and so, at times, when I fell prey to the Shadowed Soul, I hated her. I had to. I was powerless otherwise, if I loved her. Depression does that; it deflects the true emotion and twists it to its own dark purposes. My fits of hatred never lasted long and Miss Alaniz was the wholesome constant through my education and teenage years.

  It was funny, I had not thought about her in years and sitting here watching my best friend sleep and dream his doggy dreams I recalled how Miss Alaniz made me happy. Her compassion and understanding alone had helped me through those terrible wilderness years. I thought that I would end up marrying someone like her. She had been my ideal woman at such a formative time that it seemed natural. In fact when I had turned 18 and developed a desire to look at online pornography I tended to favour photographs of women that looked like Miss Alaniz. However, Beth was different in so many ways; she was fair and Miss Alaniz was dark brunette. Physically there was no comparison. There was however a similar vein of understanding and love in their souls.

  As I watched Bailey sleep on the floor at my feet, I smirked at the thought of how much porn had meant to me when I was younger. I had never been particularly good with women, nor people in general. So, for eighteen months those online images containing seductive facial expressions coupled with lurid, fleshy positions had been almost exclusively what I had sought. I shook my head recalling, bemused, at what a waste of my precious time it had been.

  Bailey shuddered in his sleep as I glanced at my laptop on the table. After a moment I decided to have a look, for old times’ sake, just to see if these pictures had an effect on me as a happily married man. Relieved that Bailey was still asleep, I brought the laptop back to my seat with an uncluttered conscience. I typed in a URL that I still knew by heart and as the photographs loaded I felt a long forgotten thrill tickle at my stomach.

  Bailey whined once in his sleep and then growled as I exploded in fantasy.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The journey taking Bailey to Beth was bittersweet. Bailey loved public transport, the movement and people around him. He sat patiently on the floor next to me, watching contentedly, and that always gave me joy. My momentary happiness was tempered by the fact I was taking Bailey out of my life. My apartment would be empty without him.

  We got off a few stops before Beth’s parents’ home --a chance at more time with my dog. I had also read somewhere that exercise was a good thing for keeping the Shadowed Soul at bay, something about more endorphins and less cortisol. Endorphins released during exercise were effective against depression, and although I had never done sustained sports to confirm it, I thought it could not hurt to exert myself long enough to walk the dog a longer stretch than usual.

  Tail wagging happily, Bailey padded alongside, his nose twitching at the symphony of scents that wafted around him, his ears cocking at sounds unheard by me. Occasionally we stopped so he could examine a particularly interesting spot on the ground or on a lamp post.
And when he decided that he wanted to add to whatever scents were there, he did.

  As soon as we got into the house his canine emotions went into overdrive as he was greeted by Pete and Dorothy. His entire body doubled in on itself as he allowed them to fuss over him. His paws clattering against the wooden hallway, Bailey found Beth in the living room. Nursing Jonathan, Beth sat comfortably on a large chair. Bailey sniffed the baby and seemed to know instinctively to sit patiently at Beth’s feet. His tail dragged side to side on the floor. His enthusiasm was tempered by his awareness that the small life his mistress held in her arms was too fragile for an exuberant greeting. Beth smiled at me then turned her attention to Bailey.

  “That’s a good boy, Bailey,” she soothed. “I want you to meet Jonathan. He’s new to the family and he is going to love you as much as we do.”

  Bailey cocked his head then gently raised his left paw to rest it gently on Beth’s left leg. Of course, I remained for a while, but declined to hold Jonathan because I had ridden public transport.

  “Germs,” I explained. Instead, I washed my hands and sat beside Beth and stroked her hair. We talked about the baby, the weather, the dog, everything that normal people talk about and then I noticed the time.

  “I should go, Beth,” I said with regret noticing how fatigued she looked. “You need your rest.”

  “I don’t want you to have to make four changes on the bus rather than the usual two,” said Beth compressing a yawn.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine, honey,” she smiled again. “Tired. Baby’s up a lot in the night to either drink or poop. And I’ve got mastitis, so I’m constantly having to put hot compresses on my boobs.”

  “Of course,” I nodded, for the most part clueless how hard it would be to recover from surgery and get up every few hours to breast feed and change an infant, forget about the time and energy required for Beth’s own self-care. And mastitis, whatever, I thought. It was not until I googled it eventually that I realized the hell Beth endured in the three most sensitive parts of her body.