chapter TWENTY-SIX
“I want to tell you about my past,” I said as we lay in bed that night.
“I love you for who you are. Whatever is in your past cannot change that.” Vittorio kissed my forehead.
“I’m not saying it would or should, but my past is kind of ugly. I only mean I want you to know me, as I want to know you.”
“Very well then, mio amore.”
I sat up, propping pillows against the headboard. “There’s nothing really exciting to tell before I was fourteen. I was popular in grade school and had a lot of friends. That carried over into my freshman year of high school. I guess I was kind of stuck up. I had everything I ever wanted, and I knew it. I was in drama club, and was the first freshman ever to get the lead in the fall musical. I thought my life was perfect.” I stared at a speck of lint on the blanket, trying to distance myself from the pain of the memories.
“My mom was a music teacher. In November of that year, she went out of town for a seminar that would introduce new methods of teaching music. When she was driving home, she was hit by a semi whose driver had fallen asleep. She was pronounced dead at the scene. My mom was my best friend. I was devastated.”
“I am so sorry, Elena.”
“Oh, there’s more,” I said bitterly. “Turns out my father was having an affair. I don’t think my mom knew. His mistress showed up at the funeral to comfort my father. I don’t know if he invited her. I never bothered to ask. I didn’t say a word to her, but I slapped my father across the face in front of everyone and told him I never wanted to speak to him again. I told him he had no right to be there and demanded that he leave. That was at the funeral parlor, right in front of Mom’s casket.” I paused, wiping tears from my face. It had been years since I had talked to anyone except my therapist about this.
“At the cemetery, before they lowered the casket, I lost it. I threw myself onto the casket, and they had to pull me away. I watched while they lowered the casket and buried it. I just sat there on the ground, crying hysterically. When the workers finally left, I sat on the fresh earth and apologized to Mom. I told her I was sorry for causing a scene, and pleaded with her not to leave me alone in the world. I realize now how silly that was. It’s not like she was going to come back to life.”
“It is not silly, Elena.” Vittorio cupped my face in his hand.
I gave him a weak smile. “I stayed with a friend for a few weeks. Going back to school was hard. I cried a lot. My so-called friends didn’t understand. They had never endured such a tragedy. They didn’t know how devastating it was, and started to drift away from me, leaving me alone at lunch to cry onto my tray. Everyone in the musical started to hate me, too. Opening night was two weeks away, and my performance was awful. They didn’t have enough time for someone else to learn the part, though, so they hoped for the best.
“On opening night, I refused to come out of the dressing area. That’s when it really hit me that Mom wouldn’t be there for my big night. I didn’t care about the show anymore. I refused to act, and they had to call the whole thing off. That may as well have been the end of my high school career. The musical was a big deal at my school. Any friends who had held on abandoned me at that point. I bounced from relative to relative, staying with each one long enough to test their sanity, and then moving on.” I stopped and tried to compose myself.
“You don’t have to tell me this if it is too painful,” Vittorio said, gently rubbing my back.
I ignored him and continued. “I pretty much quit going to school. After a few months, I managed to befriend some of the other outsiders, the druggies. I took any kind of drug they gave me, drank, you name it. I racked up quite the juvenile record with shoplifting and dropped out of school altogether the day I turned sixteen. My relatives couldn’t handle me, so I stayed with my new friends whenever I could, slept on the street when I couldn’t. My father reported me as a runaway, so whenever I encountered a cop, they’d hauled me back to my father’s house. I was out the door again as soon as the cop pulled away each time.
“You’d think after almost two years I would have come to terms with Mom’s death, but I was in too much a haze to know what was going on. Kevin tried to make me stay with him. He’s two years older than me and had just gotten his own apartment. I did for a while, but he constantly lectured me about my behavior, so I left and didn’t speak to him for a long time. I probably should have died from an overdose, or sleeping in the streets in the middle of winter, or any other of a dozen reasons. Somehow, I didn’t.
“When I was seventeen, I agreed to help my friends rob a convenience store. We had no idea what we were doing, and stupidly chose one in a strip mall with a police sub station. Once they realized what was going on everyone scattered. I was so drugged up I just stood there confused, and I was arrested and sent to juvie for several months. I thought I would die from the pain of withdrawal. They made me talk to a counselor, and when they finally released me it was under the condition that I continue seeing a psychiatrist and check in once a month for drug tests. The psychiatrist prescribed Zoloft to help even out my mood. That’s the other reason I don’t drink.”
“At some point we will want to try to get you away from that. You will have even more focus and control of your power when you are unmedicated, but that can wait.”
“Good, because I’m not sure I could survive all this right now without it.” I took a few deep breaths before returning to my story. “I still refused to live with my father. Even though the cops had hauled me there several times, I hadn’t spoken a word to him since Mom’s funeral. I went to stay with Kevin. I don’t know why the hell he accepted me back into his life, but I’m thankful he did. He helped me stay clean, and made sure I took my Zoloft every day. If it wasn’t for him, I probably would have gone right back to where I had been.” I cried for a long time while Vittorio held me. I was surprised at how easy it was to tell him everything. Not once during my confession had a judging look crossed his face.
I choked on my sobs, knowing I had to come clean.
Vittorio pulled away slightly and studied my face. “What else is there, mio amore?”